Surf's Down on the Net, Survey Says

By LESLIE HELM

Jan. 12, 1996 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

An extensive survey of American households released Thursday suggests that cyberspace is less populated and less interesting than is widely believed, findings that could throw cold water on the enormous expectations that have built up around the worldwide computer network known as the Internet.

The survey by New York market researcher Find/SVP, based on more than 27,000 phone calls made in November and December, estimated there are about 9.5 million Internet users in the United States, two thirds of whom only log on about once a week. The figures are much lower than those of other recent studies.

For example, a widely quoted August survey by Nielson Media Research counted 24 million Internet users and as many as 36 million with access to the Internet. The report helped spark a stampede to the Net, with corporations racing to create sites on the Internet’s Word Wide Web and investors pouring money into Internet-related stocks.

“A lot of people looked at the Nielson survey as validation that the Internet boom was already here,” said Nate Zelnick, editor of Internet Business Report, an industry newsletter. The Find survey is now likely to speed what many consider an overdue correction to the inflated expectations about the Internet.

“It could be biotech redux,” said Zelnick, referring to the frenzied buying and subsequent disappointment that surrounded biotechnology developments in the early 1990s.

The Find survey concluded not only that the population of Internet users is far lower than many had assumed, but also that there is a lot less “net surfing” taking place than many had assumed. For example, only 36% of all users of the World Wide Web have visited more than 50 sites where they viewed more than a single page at the site.

Those results suggest the Web may be less attractive as a medium for advertising than is often suggested. Many Internet information providers are counting on advertising to support their efforts.

The difference in the Nielson and Find survey results center on their definition of what constitutes an Internet user. Nielson arrived at its 24 million figure by including any respondent who had used the Internet within the previous three months. The 36 million number came from counting people who had access through subscriptions of friends or family.

Find used a tighter screen. The company asked each household how many family members currently used the Internet, and then required each Internet user to name an Internet application other than e-mail--accessing a Usenet group or the Web, for example--to be counted as a user.

Tom Miller, who headed Find’s survey team, said the Nielson survey approached the Internet as if it were a mass medium such as television, in which the key measure is the potential audience that has access to the medium and is therefore reachable through advertising.

“The reality is that people use the Internet more like the yellow pages than like a television set,” Miller said.

Tom Dubois, director of Nielson Interactive Services, said a high dropout rate among Internet users could partly explain the difference in the Find and Nielson numbers. Dubois says Nielson also may have done a better job tracking college age and other young users not easily identified in a typical telephone survey.

The Find survey does support the notion that large numbers of new users continue to plunge into cyberspace. Slightly more than half of the Internet users surveyed by Find said they first got onto the Internet in 1995. The survey also found that only 35% of Internet users are women, but that usage by women is growing fast, with 71% of female users saying they connected to the Internet last year for the first time.

Those numbers suggest strong growth in the cyberspace population. But they could be further evidence of heavy turnover among Internet users, with many people choosing to drop out after a quick test drive.

The Find survey also suggests that while Internet users like the idea of a “library on the desktop,” they are frustrated when it comes to using the library. Although respondents agreed strongly that information access was a key reason for using the Internet, only 16% were satisfied with their ability to find information.

Entertainment and commerce are often cited as key growth areas for the Internet, also rated low among Internet users surveyed. Only users under 30 listed entertainment as an important use, and few saw much of a future for buying and selling over the Net.

“When a technology gets exciting, there is escalating hype in the field,” says Emily Green, analyst at Forrester Research. “It gets to the point where the base technology can’t meet expectations. [A backlash] has probably already started. It’s inevitable.”

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Net Change

Internet users spend an average of 6.6 hours per week on the Net, usually cutting into their TV-watching time. Percentage of users whose time devoted to the following activities increased or decreased:

Television

Use decreased: 32%

Use increased: 4%

Long-distance phone calls

Use decreased: 25%

Use increased: 11%

Videos

Use decreased: 15%

Use increased: 5%

Magazines

Use decreased: 13%

Use increased: 11%