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*                                                            * 
*                         CYBERSPACE                         * 
*         A biweekly column on net culture appearing         * 
*                in the Toronto Sunday Sun                   * 
*                                                            * 
* Copyright 2000 Karl Mamer                                  * 
* Free for online distribution                               * 
* All Rights Reserved                                        * 
* Direct comments and questions to:                          * 
*                                         * 
*                                                            * 
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Who let the data out?

I love statistics. I graduated with a BA in Psychology and a 
solid C+ average. The only psych credits I ever got A's in 
where the three required Statistics courses.

When learning stats, the universe made sense. Freud didn't.

I love pouring over stats and learning things like the GDP of 
Ghana or how much milk Skydome could hold. Knowledge is, after 
all, power.

Stats about the net for a long time were pretty hard to come 
by. It was really anyone's guess how many people were online in 
1996 or what was the most requested domain. Things changed when 
dot.coms began pouring huge dollars into advertising. No one 
wants to target a $2 million ad campaign based on figures a 
network guy worked out on a napkin at Starbucks.

Fortunately for the stats junkie there's a whole range of 
interesting facts and figures (not to mention exciting charts 
and graphs) about the net to be found on the net.

A great place to go for all sorts of interesting information 
about the state of the net, with a business focus, is 
TheStandard.com's metrics section 
(www.thestandard.com/research/metrics/). TheStandard.com 
reveals that despite all the focus on ecommerce and business-
to-business commerce, the vast majority (76%) of net users are 
seeking out entertainment sites. Roughly a third prefers sports 
sites, a third prefers music sites, and a third prefers game 
sites.

A number of the reports come from a company called Media Metrix 
(www.mediametrix.com). Media Metrix is sort of the Nielsen 
ratings of the net. Under the press release section the company 
has a number of interesting reports about the net usage. The 
most interesting set of stats Media Metrix regularly publishes 
is the Top 50 Most Visited Web sites. 

The top site visited in June was AOL. It had nearly 60 million 
unique visitors in the month. Rounding out the top three were 
Microsoft's various sites (for example hotmail.com) and Yahoo. 
No big surprises. Media Metrix recently published a study that 
took a lot of people by surprise. Women users are not as 
elusive as once thought. In the first four months of 2000, 
women users actually made up the majority of the net's users.

Portals such as Yahoo and the Lycos family of search engines 
are top favorites. Of course, being popular doesn't ensure they 
have indexed the most sites or offer the most accurate 
searches. Search sites like google.com and northernlight.com 
seem to be constantly jostling for the title of most complete 
and accurate search engine. A great page to find out who's 
currently on top is the Search Engine Watch page. You'll find 
interesting stats at www.searchenginewatch.com/reports/.

The Search Engine Watch tests search engines in interesting 
ways. For example, search engines try to eliminate "spammers" 
from their indexes. Some webmasters load up a page with 
keywords like "playboy" in hopes it will generate traffic and 
banner ad impressions. The Search Engine Watch page reveals 
which of the popular search engines deal best with this kind of 
noise.

Even more revealing than what search engines people are using, 
is what they're actually searching for. A enlightening snapshot 
of North American culture can be had at Lycos' Top 50 searches 
page at 50.lycos.com.

The Lycos Top 50 lists not only the search term's position but 
the number of weeks it's been on the list. The current Top 50 
longevity champs are, not surprisingly, Britney Spears and 
Pamela Anderson. They've been on the Lycos Top 50 for over a 
year. Interestingly enough the Japanese Dragonball Anime series 
has likewise been a chart topper for more than a year. 
Dragonball rates higher than searches for information on the TV 
show survivor. 

When was the last time you heard people chattering about 
Dragonball around the lunchroom table? Is North American 
society ignoring a potent social undercurrent?

Well, you heard it here first. Dragonball is going to be the 
next big thing.

See how exciting stats can be?

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