Index: The Networked Public

The Living Library Index – inspired by the Harper’s Index – provides important statistics and highlights global trends in governance innovation. This installment focuses on the networked public and was originally published in 2014.

Global Overview

• The proportion of global population who use the Internet in 2013: 38.8%, up 3 percentage points from 2012
• Increase in average global broadband speeds from 2012 to 2013: 17%
• Percent of internet users surveyed globally that access the internet at least once a day in 2012: 96
• Hours spent online in 2012 each month across the globe: 35 billion
• Country with the highest online population, as a percent of total population in 2012: United Kingdom (85%)
• Country with the lowest online population, as a percent of total population in 2012: India (8%)
• Trend with the highest growth rate in 2012: Location-based services (27%)
• Years to reach 50 million users: telephone (75), radio (38), TV (13), internet (4)

Growth Rates in 2014

• Rate at which the total number of Internet users is growing: less than 10% a year
• Worldwide annual smartphone growth: 20%
• Tablet growth: 52%
• Mobile phone growth: 81%
• Percentage of all mobile users who are now smartphone users: 30%
• Amount of all web usage in 2013 accounted for by mobile: 14%
• Amount of all web usage in 2014 accounted for by mobile: 25%
• Percentage of money spent on mobile used for app purchases: 68%
• Growth of BitCoin wallet between 2013 and 2014: 8 times increase
• Number of listings on AirBnB in 2014: 550k, 83% growth year on year
• How many buyers are on Alibaba in 2014: 231MM buyers, 44% growth year on year

Social Media

• Number of Whatsapp messages on average sent per day: 50 billion
• Number sent per day on Snapchat: 1.2 billion
• How many restaurants are registered on GrubHub in 2014: 29,000
• Amount the sale of digital songs fell in 2013: 6%
• How much song streaming grew in 2013: 32%
• Number of photos uploaded and shared every day on Flickr, Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook and Whatsapp combined in 2014: 1.8 billion
• How many online adults in the U.S. use a social networking site of some kind: 73%
• Those who use multiple social networking sites: 42%
• Dominant social networking platform: Facebook, with 71% of online adults
• Number of Facebook users in 2004, its founding year: 1 million
• Number of monthly active users on Facebook in September 2013: 1.19 billion, an 18% increase year-over-year
• How many Facebook users log in to the site daily: 63%
• Instagram users who log into the service daily: 57%
• Twitter users who are daily visitors: 46%
• Number of photos uploaded to Facebook every minute: over 243,000, up 16% from 2012
• How much of the global internet population is actively using Twitter every month: 21%
• Number of tweets per minute: 350,000, up 250% from 2012
• Fastest growing demographic on Twitter: 55-64 year age bracket, up 79% from 2012
• Fastest growing demographic on Facebook: 45-54 year age bracket, up 46% from 2012
• How many LinkedIn accounts are created every minute: 120, up 20% from 2012
• The number of Google searches in 2013: 3.5 million, up 75% from 2012
• Percent of internet users surveyed globally that use social media in 2012: 90
• Percent of internet users surveyed globally that use social media daily: 60
• Time spent social networking, the most popular online activity: 22%, followed by searches (21%), reading content (20%), and emails/communication (19%)
• The average age at which a child acquires an online presence through their parents in 10 mostly Western countries: six months
• Number of children in those countries who have a digital footprint by age 2: 81%
• How many new American marriages between 2005-2012 began by meeting online, according to a nationally representative study: more than one-third 
• How many of the world’s 505 leaders are on Twitter: 3/4
• Combined Twitter followers: of 505 world leaders: 106 million
• Combined Twitter followers of Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, and Lady Gaga: 122 million
• How many times all Wikipedias are viewed per month: nearly 22 billion times
• How many hits per second: more than 8,000 
• English Wikipedia’s share of total page views: 47%
• Number of articles in the English Wikipedia in December 2013: over 4,395,320 
• Platform that reaches more U.S. adults between ages 18-34 than any cable network: YouTube
• Number of unique users who visit YouTube each month: more than 1 billion
• How many hours of video are watched on YouTube each month: over 6 billion, 50% more than 2012
• Proportion of YouTube traffic that comes from outside the U.S.: 80%
• Most common activity online, based on an analysis of over 10 million web users: social media
• People on Twitter who recommend products in their tweets: 53%
• People who trust online recommendations from people they know: 90%

Mobile and the Internet of Things

• Number of global smartphone users in 2013: 1.5 billion
• Number of global mobile phone users in 2013: over 5 billion
• Percent of U.S. adults that have a cell phone in 2013: 91
• Number of which are a smartphone: almost two thirds
• Mobile Facebook users in March 2013: 751 million, 54% increase since 2012
• Growth rate of global mobile traffic as a percentage of global internet traffic as of May 2013: 15%, up from .9% in 2009
• How many smartphone owners ages 18–44 “keep their phone with them for all but two hours of their waking day”: 79%
• Those who reach for their smartphone immediately upon waking up: 62%
• Those who couldn’t recall a time their phone wasn’t within reach or in the same room: 1 in 4
• Facebook users who access the service via a mobile device: 73.44%
• Those who are “mobile only”: 189 million
• Amount of YouTube’s global watch time that is on mobile devices: almost 40%
• Number of objects connected globally in the “internet of things” in 2012: 8.7 billion
• Number of connected objects so far in 2013: over 10 billion
• Years from tablet introduction for tables to surpass desktop PC and notebook shipments: less than 3 (over 55 million global units shipped in 2013, vs. 45 million notebooks and 35 million desktop PCs)
• Number of wearable devices estimated to have been shipped worldwide in 2011: 14 million
• Projected number of wearable devices in 2016: between 39-171 million
• How much of the wearable technology market is in the healthcare and medical sector in 2012: 35.1%
• How many devices in the wearable tech market are fitness or activity trackers: 61%
• The value of the global wearable technology market in 2012: $750 million
• The forecasted value of the market in 2018: $5.8 billion
• How many Americans are aware of wearable tech devices in 2013: 52%
• Devices that have the highest level of awareness: wearable fitness trackers,
• Level of awareness for wearable fitness trackers amongst American consumers: 1 in 3 consumers
• Value of digital fitness category in 2013: $330 million
• How many American consumers surveyed are aware of smart glasses: 29%
• Smart watch awareness amongst those surveyed: 36%

Access

• How much of the developed world has mobile broadband subscriptions in 2013: 3/4
• How much of the developing world has broadband subscription in 2013: 1/5
• Percent of U.S. adults that had a laptop in 2012: 57
• How many American adults did not use the internet at home, at work, or via mobile device in 2013: one in five
• Amount President Obama initiated spending in 2009 in an effort to expand access: $7 billion
• Number of Americans potentially shut off from jobs, government services, health care and education, among other opportunities due to digital inequality: 60 million
• American adults with a high-speed broadband connection at home as of May 2013: 7 out of 10
• Americans aged 18-29 vs. 65+ with a high-speed broadband connection at home as of May 2013: 80% vs. 43
• American adults with college education (or more) vs. adults with no high school diploma that have a high-speed broadband connection at home as of May 2013: 89% vs. 37%
• Percent of U.S. adults with college education (or more) that use the internet in 2011: 94
• Those with no high school diploma that used the internet in 2011: 43
• Percent of white American households that used the internet in 2013: 67
• Black American households that used the internet in 2013: 57
• States with lowest internet use rates in 2013: Mississippi, Alabama and Arkansas
• How many American households have only wireless telephones as of the second half of 2012: nearly two in five
• States with the highest prevalence of wireless-only adults according to predictive modeling estimates: Idaho (52.3%), Mississippi (49.4%), Arkansas (49%)
• Those with the lowest prevalence of wireless-only adults: New Jersey (19.4%), Connecticut (20.6%), Delaware (23.3%) and New York (23.5%)

Sources

• “A Focus on Efficiency: A whitepaper from Facebook, Ericsson and Qualcomm,” internet.org, September 16, 2013.  
• “Always Connected: How Smartphones And Social Keep Us Engaged,” IDC Research Report, 2013.
• Blumberg, Stephen J., Nadarajasundaram Ganesh, Julian V. Luke, and Gilbert Gonzales. “Wireless Substitution: State-level Estimates From the National Health Interview Survey, 2012,” National Health Statistics Reports, Number 70, December 18, 2013.
• Cacioppo, John T., Stephanie Cacioppo, Gian C. Gonzaga, Elizabeth L. Ogburn, and Tyler J. VanderWeele. “Marital satisfaction and break-ups differ across on-line and off-line meeting venues,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 110, no. 25 (2013): 10135-10140.
• “Connections Counter: The Internet of Everything in Motion,” Cisco, July 29, 2013.
• Cooper, Belle Beth. “10 Surprising social media statistics that might make you rethink your social strategy,” Buffer, July 16, 2013.
• Duggan, Maeve and Aaron Smith. “Social Media Update 2013” Pew Research Center, January 2014.
• “Facebook Quarterly Earnings Slides,” Q1 2013, Facebook.
• Hachman, Mark. “Facebook Used by Half of the World’s Internet Users, Save Asia,” PC Mag, February 2012.
• Hanun, Marya. “Klout,” Foreign Policy, August 9, 2013
• Howle, Cynthia, Glenny Brock, and Alan Blinder. “Most of U.S. is Wired but Millions Aren’t Plugged In,” The New York Times, August 18, 2013.
• “Key ICT indicators for developed and developing countries and the world (totals and penetration rates)”, International Telecommunications Unions (ITU), Geneva, February 27, 2013.
• “Global Internet User Survey Sumary Reports,” The Internet Society, 2012, Accessed on August 13, 2013.
• Goldsmith, Belinda. “Porn passed over as Web users become social: author,” Reuters, September 2008.
• Meeker, Mary. “Internet Trends 2013,” KPCB, presented at D11 Conference, Rancho Palos,Verdes, California, May 28-30, 2013.
• Meeker, Mary. “2014 Internet Trends,” KPCB, May 28, 2014.
• Mirani, Leo. “A snapshot of one minute on the internet, today and in 2012,” Quartz, November  26, 2013.
• Piombino, Kristin. “How Internet Users Worldwide Spend Time Online,” May 17, 2012.
• Qualman, Erik. “Social Media Revolution,” YouTube, March 21, 2013.
• “Statistics,” YouTube, Accessed December 6, 2013.
• Sullivan, Danny. “Google: 100 billion Searches Per month, Search to integrate Gmail, Launching Enhanced Search App for iOS,” Search Engine Land, August 8, 2012.
• “Twitter Now The Fastest Growing Social Platform In The World” Global Web Index, January 28 , 2013.
• “Wearable Tech Device Awareness Surpasses 50 Percent Among US Consumers, According to NPD,” NPD Group, January 2014.
• “Wearable Technology Market – Global Scenario, Trends, Industry Analysis, Size, Share and Forecast, 2012- 2018,” Transparency Market Research, 2013.
• “Wikimedia Report Card” Wikimedia Labs, December 2013.
• “World Market for Wearable Technology – A Quantitative Market Assessment – 2012,” IMS Research, 2012.
• “Would you want a digital footprint from birth?” AVG Blogs, October 6, 2010.
• Zickuhr, Kathryn and Aaron Smith. “Digital Differences,” Pew Internet & American Life Project, April 13, 2012
• Zickuhr, Kathryn and Aaron Smith. “Home Broadband 2013,” Pew Internet & American Life Project, August 26, 2013.