A scene from the last BT strategy meeting
BT is no longer interested in pimpin’ your broadband; its media boffins have thought of another ingenious way to ‘get down’ with ‘the kids’: appropriate a jaunty Sam Sparro song title into your lastest media campaign.
How do they do it? I wish I possessed merely a fraction of BT’s creative expertise.
So anyway, the BT ‘Black and Gold’ (only joking), the BT ‘21st Century Life’ report dropped into my inbox this morning with a running man and a blur of dayglo MC Hammer pants. Despite the obvious steal in the title, some interesting facts are contained therein.
I will summarise them just for you dear reader:
-
In 1998, only 14% of internet users spent between six and ten hours online. In 2008 this figure jumped to 27%, with a further 23% spending between 11 to 30 hours online.
-
19% of internet users now visit more than 20 different sites in a week.
-
In 1998, only 2% of internet users shopped online. Over the last ten years, that figure has rocketed to 41%. 48% of that shopping activity is for flights, while 42% is for clothes. Only 19% of us do our weekly grocery shop online.
-
25% of internet users have tried social networking. Unsurprisingly, the uptake is most prominent in 16 -24 year olds (58%). Downloading music is still a more popular net activity than social networking however, as is listening to internet radio.
-
Broadband internet is now in 44% of UK households. Only 6% still use dial-up connections.
-
Remarkably, there’s more face to face communication going on in 2008 than 1998, with 68% of BT customers engaging in the lost art of verbal conversation (51% in 1998).
-
Fixed line telephone use is down to just 12% in 2008, usurped by mobile phone use, email and face to face conversations.
-
Workers check their email an average of 4.9 times per hour.
-
When asked how people would improve the internet, the top response was to make it faster.
-
A major worry in 2008 is fraud, with 27% of internet users citing this as the single most important area for improvement.
