the Internet in numbers [for 2012]

Pingdom is a Swedish company that specialises in monitoring uptime for online resources (server resources and actual websites). They also maintain a blog where as they say “also ramble and muse about technology in general, and the Internet and web technology, in particular”. One of the interesting data collection and collation that they do allows them to present an annual report on the Internet doings (The Internet in Numbers).

How many emails were sent during 2012? How many domains are there? What’s the most popular web browser? How many Internet users are there? These are some of the questions we’ll answer for you. To bring you these answers, Pingdom “have gone to the ends of the web – wherever that is – and back again, and compiled a list of truly fascinating facts about the year that was. Some of the numbers are snapshots taken during the year, others cover the entire period. Either way, they all contribute to giving us a better understanding of Internet in 2012”.

Some interesting measurements :

(visit the Pingdom page, to access the individual numbers’ sources, plus a wealth of more informative collected measurements on other topics as well, such as video & images traffics) :

2.2 Billion – Number of email users worldwide.

144 Billion – Total email traffic per day worldwide.

61% – Share of emails that were considered non-essential.

68.8% – Percentage of all email traffic that was spam.

634 Million – Number of websites (December 2012).

51 Million – Number of websites added during the year (2012).

87.8 Million – Number of Tumblr blogs.

59.4 Million – Number of WordPress sites around the world.

$2.45 Million – The price for Investing.com, the most expensive domain name sold in 2012.

2.4 Billion – Number of Internet users worldwide.

565 Million – Number of Internet users in China, more than any other country in the world.

1 Billion – Number of monthly active users on Facebook, passed in October.

2.7 Billion – Number of likes on Facebook every day.

40.5 years – Average age of a Facebook user.

200 Million – Monthly active users on Twitter, passed in December.

175 Million – Average number of tweets sent every day throughout 2012.

37.3 years – Average age of a Twitter user.

1.2 Trillion – Number of searches on Google  in 2012.

67% – Google’s market-leading share of the U.S. search market (December).

5 Billion – Number of mobile broadband subscriptions.

6.7 Billion – Number of mobile subscriptions.

59% – Share of global mobile data traffic that was video.

[Ref.] The Internet in Numbers report http://royal.pingdom.com/2013/01/16/internet-2012-in-numbers/, with links to previous years’ reports.