The Web may have popularised the Internet, but most users now connect to the Net using non-browser applications, according to figures released this week.
Media players and instant-messaging applications are now by far the most popular Internet applications, dwarfing the Web browser, according to December figures from Nielsen//NetRatings released on Tuesday. Seventy-six percent of active Internet users access the Net using a non-browser application.
The Internet is increasingly working its way into applications outside the browser, blurring the lines between the desktop and the online world, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. "With 76 percent of Web surfers using Internet applications, functionality has grown beyond the browser to become a fundamental piece of the overall desktop," said Nielsen//NetRatings analyst Abha Bhagat, in a statement.
The most popular application in December was Windows Media Player, reaching 34 percent of Internet users; AOL Instant Messenger, reaching 20.27 percent; RealNetworks' players, reaching 19.76 percent; MSN Messenger, reaching 19.31 percent; and Yahoo Messenger, reaching 12.26 percent.
The Web browser Mosaic, introduced a decade ago, made the Internet more accessible to non-technical users by adding a graphical user interface, but industry observers say the spread of Internet applications is taking the IT industry into a post-Web world. Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who was recently knighted for his invention of the Web, has now moved on to what he calls "the semantic Web".
Talkback
Seems that Broersma likes the idea that there is only one thing at a time happening in his elegant world. Way unfortunate that the rest of us are saddled with this uncouth world in which many things happen at any one time. It's very confusing to be bouncing back and forth between my http editor, uploads to my web site, incoming email, WINDOWS MESSENGER demands, changing radio stations on the REAL ONE PLAYER, and picking up the pieces of another Win XP crash. If Broersma were looking over my shoulder at any given moment of my wretched, 160 hours/month online chaos, I'd ask him to notice that -- in my grimy world --the Win Msgr, Player, and browser are mostly all up, all the time. And I'd ask him what color the sky is on his world.
Bogus reporting - the Nielsen//NetRatings figures indicate that 75 per cent of web surfers ALSO use apps other than browsers (i.e. NOT that use of other Internet apps is ‘dwarfing’ the use of web browsers). The key to the Nielsen//NetRatings story (which, admittedly, is a little ambiguous) is the figure of 3 hours average usage per month for non-browser apps.