Welcome to Planet Interweb
At Bonfire CI, we occasionally get asked to produce multiple language websites for our clients and it got us thinking about the size and make-up of the world’s online population.
It’s a big virtual world out there and with nearly half of the world’s total estimated population now online, it’s only going to get bigger. So we’ve made it our mission to uncover a few facts and figures to provide some context to this huge virtual world.
So where do people live on Planet Interweb and how do these compare to Planet Earth?
When compared these give some very interesting insights; North America leads in terms of migration with a staggering 87.9% of its Planet Earth population now living a second virtual life on Planet Interweb, in stark comparison to only 46.4% of Earth’s total population migrating to Planet Interweb.
Top 10 languages on Planet Interweb?
The two primary languages are English and Chinese, which represent a huge 46.8%. While this Top 10 languages represents 78.2% of all languages spoken on Planet Interweb, six of these are also the official languages of the United Nations.
Top 10 languages on Planet Earth?
How does that compare with our very own Planet Earth? Well the two biggest languages are also English and Chinese representing a total 38.5%, and the Top 10 represent 67.7% of all languages spoken on Earth.
Interweb language spread and areas of growth
On Earth, language does not restrict itself by geographic boundaries, and it is the same on Interweb. So if we remove geography, which languages are the key migrators and how have they grown in the last 15 years?
Japanese leads the table with a total 90.6% of all its natural speakers currently communicating on interweb, in comparison to Arabic which is the fastest growing language with over 6,000% growth; and with only 44.8% of all Arabic speakers currently communicating on Interweb there is still room for much more. By contrast English has 62.4% migration and has only seen 520.2% growth in the last 15 years.
Source: All data sourced from http://www.internetworldstats.com. Internet Usage and World Population Statistics updated as of November 30, 2015. Copyright © 2016, Miniwatts Marketing Group. All rights reserved worldwide. The most recent Internet usage information comes from data published by Nielsen Online, International Telecommunications Union, GfK, and other reliable sources. World population information comes mainly from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Eurostats.
Interpretation examples
– 872,950,266 English speaking people communicate on Planet Interweb, representing 25.9 %, and the most popular, of languages spoken on Interweb. Closely followed by Chinese.
– Out of the estimated 1,398,283,969 persons on Earth that speak English, 62.4 % communicate on Planet Interweb.
– The number of English speakers on Interweb has grown 520.2% in the last 15 years (2000-2015).