Some interesting statistics from Verisign.com (Yes, the company which operates the .com and .net domain!)
746,934,000 – The number of worldwide Internet users, up 10 percent in 2008. And, for the first time in the history of the Internet, consumer IP traffic surpassed business IP traffic in 2008, most of it being broadband or faster.
Top 5 Internet Markets
(country) (Internet users) (penetration) (worldwide share)
US (182,779,000 ) ( 61% ) ( 16% )
China ( 137,000,000) ( 10% ) ( 12% )
India ( 72,746,000 ) ( 7% ) ( 6% )
Japan ( 67,489,000 ) ( 53% ) ( 6% )
United Kingdom ( 43,752,000 ) ( 72% ) ( 4% )
2 out of 3 – Number of Internet users who visit social networking sites – a number that has more than doubled in the last three years. (needs less to say, facebook is the king of social networking now)
2 out of 3 – Internet users in the United States shopped and made a purchase online in 2007.
$146 billion – U.S. retail e-commerce sales in 2008, greater than the GDP of Switzerland, Sweden, South Africa, Portugal, and Denmark combined.
$1243 – Amount the average American will spend shopping online this year.
$68.88 – The average PayPal Transaction
85% – Number of online shopeers who actually buy thing.
Top Internet Retailers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Unique Visitors
eBay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72,972,000
Amazon Sites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57,002,000
Apple Inc.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45,396,000
Wal-Mart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30,398,000
Target Corporation . . . . . . . . . . . . 27,978,000
Shopzilla.com Sites . . . . . . . . . . . . 21,425,000
Yahoo! Shopping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19,278,000
Moviefone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15,632,000
Best Buy Sites. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14,585,000
Ticketmaster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13,487,000
You can download the PDF here.
Last but not least, do you know Verisign also owns Thawte.com and Geotrust.com? It makes them the giant in SSL Security Products!