For Immediate Release
July 5, 1995

NOT JUST FOR THE COMPUTER ELITE:
MAJOR COMMERCIAL BROWSERS, LOCAL PROVIDERS BROADEN BASE OF WWW USERS

Data collected this spring from more than 13,000 users of the World Wide Web suggests commercial online services are significantly broadening the population of people using this rapidly- growing part of the Information Superhighway. The work is believed to be the first to examine the impact of Web access provided through major national services such as Prodigy.

Web access offered by the large national services and expansion of local Internet service providers is helping change the age, gender, income, occupation and other demographics of Web users. Though African-Americans remain poorly represented, the research suggests more women are now entering the traditionally male-dominated computer network.

Chart shows that both Windows and Macintosh have now passed Unix as the favored platforms for World Wide Web browsing software.

"The respondents we are seeing now are less technically-oriented and more likely to be female than those we have seen in the past," said James E. Pitkow, a Georgia Institute of Technology researcher who has been studying demographic trends on the Web for more than a year. "Overall, there are more people coming from outside the educational domain. This shows that the people browsing the Web are becoming more like the general population."

One key finding: Since similar research was conducted in October 1994, Windows has replaced Unix as the predominant computer operating system for those browsing the Web.

The information was gathered from questionnaires posted on the Web from April 10 to May 10, 1995. At the time the questionnaires were posted, only Prodigy had made its Web browser software widely available, and approximately 20 percent of those answering the questions entered the Web through that service. The researchers advertised the questionnaire on Prodigy, and in other Internet locations and popular sites on the Web.

"We found that Prodigy brings both a younger population and an older population, compared to the typical Internet user," Pitkow explained. "The service brings a larger population in the K-12 age, as well as more older and professional people."

The responses demonstrate that the World Wide Web has grown beyond the college and university groups that have been the predominant users, noted Laurie Hodges, a collaborator in the work and a research scientist in the Georgia Tech Research Institute. Though the Web demographics appear to be changing, she believes marketers will still use it to reach "niche" audiences.

"These numbers shouldn't be overapplied to direct the development of Internet and World Wide Web applications," she suggested. "I think successful business and government applications will be directed at the hundreds and thousands of micromarkets that exist online."

More than half the respondents answering questions about it said they had learned HTML -- the code used for creating Web pages -- in less than three hours. This shows the Web's potential as a new form of communication, noted researcher Colleen Kehoe.

"Unlike other forms of media which are basically one-way communications channels into the home, the Web is two-way," she said. "The average Web user in the future will be a producer of information as well as a consumer."

The new data also shows significant differences between North American users of the Web and their European cousins. European browsers of the Web, for example, tended to be younger and better educated, but had lower incomes and were less likely to be female.

Because the respondents were not randomly selected from the total population of Web users, the information lacks the vigor of a true scientific survey. However, the data collected by the researchers in Georgia Tech's Graphics, Visualization and Usability (GVU) Center provides one of the best available pictures of who is using the hypermedia system. An earlier survey in October of 1994 obtained approximately 4,500 responses and established a baseline for comparison.

Results are available on the Web at http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/user_surveys/survey-04-1995/. Key findings of the third survey include:

Age: The average age of Web users increased by four years since the October survey. The average U.S. user was 36 years old, while the average European user was just 31. The average Prodigy Web browser was 39 years old.

Gender: Overall, 15.5 percent of the users were female, up six percent since the October study. However, nearly 20 percent of those who browsed the Web from Prodigy were female.

Occupation: Computer (31.4 percent), educational (23.7 percent) and professional (21.9 percent) occupations are the three largest job categories filled by Web users. That changed significantly among Prodigy's Web users, where the top three were professional (28.7 percent), other (20.2 percent) and management (19.5 percent).

Primary Use: Browsing (82.6 percent), entertainment (56.6 percent), work (50.9 percent), education (47 percent) and business research (38.2 percent) were the top reasons for using the Web.

Frequency of Use: Nearly three-quarters of the respondents browsed the Web at least once a day. Forty-two percent said they browsed 1-4 times daily, while 15.9 percent visited the Web more than nine times a day. Women and Prodigy members reported less frequent use.

Computer Systems: Fifty-two percent of the respondents used a Windows computer; 26.2 percent used a Macintosh and 8.8 percent used Unix machines. The numbers changed dramatically from the second survey, reflecting widening access to the Web. The earlier numbers were Unix (44 percent), Windows (29 percent) and Macintosh (19 percent).

Marital Status: About half (50.3 percent) of the Web users are married; among Prodigy users, the figure is 61.4 percent.

Beyond the demographic data, "The GVU Center's 3rd WWW Survey" also collected information about consumer purchasing practices and attitudes toward transaction security in an effort being analyzed independently by Dr. Sunil Gupta of the University of Michigan's School of Business.

Among the most significant findings in this part of the research was that Web users showed an overall median income of between $50,000 and $60,000. Prodigy users had a higher income range: $60,000 to $75,000, with 15.7 percent reporting an income of more than $100,000. Gupta's data is available on the Web at http://www.umich.edu/~sgupta/hermes/survey3/.

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WRITER: John Toon