Internet companies that read their own traffic logs already know this. But it may come as a surprise to the uninitiated – the Internet’s heaviest usage in the United States comes during business hours.
A new study by the Wall Street Journal and eMarketer confirms it.
The at-work Internet audience is at 50 million – about one third of all U.S. workers. Since Internet users at work tend to work in white-collar jobs, they are, on average, highly educated and well off: 70 percent have college degrees and 50 percent have a household income above $75,000.
The Online Publishers Association and the Newspaper Association of America have said for some time work hours should be viewed as the Internet’s “primetime.” An OPA study confirmed earlier findings by the NAA that the Internet is five times more effective than television at reaching audiences during the day.
Movers and shakers …
Two sites streaking in the traffic race the last week – Weather.com and Oscars.com. The big storms in the East last week helped peak traffic at all the weather sites, but the big winner was Weather.com, which soard 21 percent, according to Alexa.com. And the Oscars are less than a month away, which explains the obvious interest in that site.
Easier to blog?
Weblogging is where it’s at on the Net today – the hottest trend of the past year, according to all the technology stories in all the technology journals.
It’s just become a lot easier to keep up with the demand to post, post, post.
It’s called “moblogging,” or mobile weblogging. New tools like Manywhere Moblogger, Wapblog and FoneBlog allow bloggers to post information about the minutiae of their lives from anywhere, not just from a PC.
The newest of these tools, Kablog, lets users update their weblogs remotely with cellphones and other handheld devices like wireless PDAs.
Political sites
The past year has seen a surge of interest in politics websites – an increase of 150 percent. Good, huh?
Well, not exactly. Not when you consider that political websites attracted only 0.03 percent of all Internet traffic at its peak.
When the performance of the main political parties is looked at, it is not their sites that is driving this rise. A positive sign is the existence of three sites in the Top 10 of political sites that aim to provide a link between the public and the country’s policymakers. Their goal is to collate the views of voters for use in shaping government policy.
YouGov.com, a project allowing the public to comment on current political events through voting, has been at, or near, the top of the category for the past three months, receiving 11.92 percent of all visits.
Petition Online, offering free public hosting of petitions for responsible public advocacy, ranked second in January with 11.42 percent of category visits.
Finally, ePolitix aims to boost communications between elected representatives and voters via live debates, interviews and discussion forums. It received 2.66 percent of all visits to the category in January.
