Online Usage Round-Up Q4 2007

Nearly 31 million people in the UK were surfing the web over the fourth quarter of 2007, according to figures released by BMRB. Although this is not a significant rise over the past few months, it is a 5.9% rise on the same period last year.

This is reflective of the general theme of the figures out this week. Year on year growth has fallen from 9.3% for Q4 2006 to 5.9% for Q4 2007. While the number of people online is continuing to rise, it is at a much steadier rate than previously seen.

Accessing the World Wide Web from home continues to be the most common location according to people surveyed. There has been a 7.7% rise since the same time last year, with an extra two million people bringing the internet into their domestic spaces. Academic access, which has been falling slightly over the past year, is now the highest year on year growth at 9.1%.

The online battle of the sexes seems to be balancing out slowly over time. Women are painstakingly catching up with their male counterparts, with just over a million more men online during Q4 07. Interestingly, this gap might never be margined as both sexes have the exact same rate of growth with a year on year change of 5.9%.

While there is an increase in users across all age brackets there just is not as big of a jump in numbers as we have seen in previous quarters. However, the number of people logging onto the net aged 65 or over continues to rise, with a year on year increase of 19.4%.

While usage is high among all social grades, the C1s remain the strongest sections with just over ten million users. The DEs on the lower end have seen a huge rise in recent times, although the growth seems to be settling now with only 300,000 new users in that bracket. DE has a year on year change of 6%, compared to a Q4 05- Q4 06 of 16.5%.

BMRB: www.bmrb.co.uk