THE INTERNET

The World Wide Web was designed originally as an interactive world of shared information. Since then it has transitioned from a platform used by research, government, military and educational institutions to a commercial entity. If Tim Berners Lee had been taken in the a time machine to year 2000, while he was working on the web projects in the 80s, he would have been astonished at the impact his work has over business and commerce.

The Internet is entering US homes and spreading across the globe faster than any medium in history. According to Geoffrey Ramsey, stats master at eMarketer (www.eStats.com) the net is growing at a rapid pace. In America 36 new first time users jump online every minute of the day- One new net user every 1.67 seconds.The number of Internet users in the US has increased to overwhelming numbers nearly doubling every year. The graph below from Strategis group shows that the increase in the number of adult users in the US.

The pace of adoption of the Internet is exponentially higher than the adoption of any comparable technology before. In a study by Mary Meeker, Managing Director, Morgan Stanley, and her team of researchers it was examined that the adoption rate and growth of the Internet was remarkable contrasted to the three other major "new media" invented this century: radio, network television and cable TV. As a common metric, they examined the number of years it took or will take for each media to reach 50 million U.S. users. Meeker estimates the Internet will capture 50 million users in just five years while it took TV 13 years and radio 38 years to reach this milestone.