Internet now has 2.1 billion users

Internet now active with 2.1 billion users [CNET News]

Internet-traffic website Pingdom has taken a close look at overall Internet traffic and released a study named "Internet 2011 in numbers". 

The most notable result of the study was the incredible growth in the number of overall Internet users. Back in 2000, roughly 360,000,000 people used the Internet. Now, however, roughly 30 percent of the world's population is online – 2.1 billion users.

More Internet users are from Asia than any other continent with 44 percent of all users (922 million total). Europe came in second with 23 percent (476 million) and North America was third with 13 percent (271 million). China has more users than any other country with 485 million users – roughly 36 percent of its population.

Also according to the study, there are 3.1 billion email accounts in the world and 555 million different websites. Interestingly, 300 million of the 555 million websites were added in the past year. Social media appears to be growing exponentially as well, as 200 million of Facebook's overall 800 million users joined in the past year and 100 million of the 225 million Twitter users became active in 2011.

 For all the growth the Internet has undergone since its inception (and especially over the past year), there's no reason to expect these numbers to do anything but continue to skyrocket.

Comments

[Amy Trenton]

Interesting how much things have changed in the last 5-10 years.

[Chris Denny]

It's amazing considering when I first got on the internet, there were only 50 websites around.
If you were to count banner ads now availble, the number would be staggering.