Gender & Internet & misc. other factoids.

A few factiods have popped up this Chrismukkah in the european press which I thought might belong to the "human interest" thing. Most of the info is based on US researchers "Pew internet & American Life" who interviewed 6000 american users of the net.
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25,000,000 people have used the internet in 2005 to sell something. You can sell most things on the internet, just go to Ebay and find a purchaser for everything from Charlie Chaplin's moustache:-


Patterns of use, seemingly Men use the Internet more than Women. This was certainly the case in the 90s, but US based researchers have studied demographic use and gender and come up with some surprising info :-
Men are still slightly more intense users of the web.
But 66% of women as opposed to 65% of men who have access to internet at work use it.
Women are better at email and spend more time reading blogs.
men seemingly prefer news sites and group sites being dominant in the gender share of sites such as ---- this one.
Now it gets interesting, women in groups or on lists for newsites or other political groups value emails within the group twice as much as their male counterparts.

Search engines.
90% of online men and 91% of online women use search engines and 43% of those men and 39% of those women use them on a daily basis.
88% of men and 86% of women who use search engines are convinced they find what they are looking for.
54% of men and 40% of women declare themselves as "good searchers".

Entertainment
men are more likely to use the internet as a source of entertainment. Women are more likely to use the internet to reinforce offline relationships or curiously to find lost friends.

Security
Women are slightly more concerned at internet security issues than men.

["Men and women also value the internet for a second strength, as a gateway to limitless vaults of information. Men reach farther and wider for topics, from getting financial information to political news. Along the way, they work search engines more aggressively, using engines more often and with more confidence than women.

Women are more likely to see the vast array of online information as a “glut” and to penetrate deeper into areas where they have the greatest interest, including health and religion. Women tend to treat information gathering online as a more textured and interactive process – one that includes gathering and exchanging information through support groups and personal email exchanges."]
http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Women_and_Men_online.pdf

and another curious factoid :-

37% of journalists who blog have received death threats according to El Pais.