Content makes up half of all time spent on internet

Content really is king on the internet. Research issued by the Online Publishers Association (OPA) found that people spend more than half of their internet time browsing content, whether that be video, audio or humble ol’ written words.

Specifically, 50.9% of internet users’ time is spent on content (any sites or applications that provide news, information and entertainment); 30.4% is spent on communications (such as email and forums); 14.1% is on commerce (shopping websites) and 4.6% is on searching (getting to all of the above).

Not only are we all absorbing more content than anything else, we’re doing it waaaay more than we used to: in July 2006 just 39.6% of time was spent on content.

According to the OPA, there are several reasons for the increase in time spent consuming content:

• Improvement in searching, allowing consumers to find the exact content they want faster and more easily
• The increased popularity of video
• A more accessible and faster internet means more time spent online in general
• Simply far more content on the internet than there used to be
• More efficient communication methods like instant messaging, which mean that communicating via the internet just doesn’t take as long as it used to

Personally (and unscientifically, of course) I think the increase in high quality content also has a lot to do with the proliferation of huge news websites (eg BBC Online, Guardian Unlimited) and sites such as Wikipedia have helped ordinary, nervous people to trust what they read on the web. The internet is no longer second fiddle to the printed page when it comes to accessible trustworthy information; and as a result people use it more.

I’d also be interesting to see more detailed research – the media breakdown of different content types, for example, or exactly how social networking sites are messing up the neat content/communication distinction.

But in any case, there are still three massive problems with the research.

1. The first is that it discounts quite a huge proportion of websites: all .gov, and .edu were excluded from the study. It’s not exactly clear why, or why only governmental and educational sites from the US were excluded, when those of other countries were presumably still counted.
2. Secondly, pornographic domains were also excluded. Why so coy? This isn’t a matter of morals. If we’re talking hard facts (ahem) then it’s important to note that last year 13% of all websites visited in the US were pornographic. So why not tell us how this fits in to the wider picture?
3. And thirdly, the problem with the research is… well I’m kinda embarrassed to admit this, but I found it on the internet. So it’s probably not true.