Internet audience tops 1 billion
Jacksonville Business Journal – by Jeff Clabaugh Washington Business Journal
The total global Internet audience topped 1 billion for the first time in December, according to Reston-based comScore, which tracks Internet traffic.
The Asia-Pacific region now accounts for 41 percent of all Internet users, with China ranked as the largest Internet population in the world, says comScore. China now has 180 million Internet users, or about 18 percent of the total worldwide Internet audience. The United States ranks second, at 16.2 percent.
The U.S. is followed by Japan, Germany and the U.K.
“Surpassing 1 billion global users is a significant landmark in the history of the Internet,” said comScore CEO Magid Abraham. “The second billion will be online before we know it, and the third billion will arrive even faster than that.”
The most popular property in the world in December was Google sites, with 777.9 million visitors. Google was followed by Microsoft sites and Yahoo! Sites.
Facebook has grown by 127 percent in the last year, to 222 million visitors, according to comScore, ranking Facebook as the top social networking site, and the seventh most popular property in the world overall.
Comscore (NASDAQ: SCOR) says the numbers include Internet users age 15 or older, from home or work computers. They do not include traffic from public computers, like Internet cafes, or access from mobile phones or PDAs.
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