Last updated on July 28th, 2021
Internet is one of the most important inventions that has changed the way the world functions. With every passing day, internet is becoming all the way important and deeply rooted to our existence. It helps exchange of information, do business, run government and what not. Here are some facts about the Internet that we thought would help you understand and learn more about it.
History
1. While the internet was officially invented in January 1983, it had been in use since the 1960s as an Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET), which was created to enable government researchers to share information.
2. The invention of the internet was also intended to allow the US Department of Defense to communicate without interruption in the event the US. experienced a nuclear attack during the Cold War. The invention of the internet became particularly urgent after the Soviet Union launched the Sputnik satellite.
3. While the creation of the internet involved the collective work of engineers, researchers, scientists, and programmers, Vinton Cerf and Robert Elliot Kahn were among the major contributors. As such, the two are referred to as the “fathers of the internet.”
4. In 1965, Lawrence Roberts linked two computers and enabled them to communicate with each other for the first time. To link the two computers, Roberts used a telephone line with an acoustic modem to relay the message packets to transmit digital data.
5. Although Nikola Tesla theorized creating a “world wireless system” in which communication could be possible without the use of lines in the early 1900s, Sir Tim Bernes-Lee managed to invent the World Wide Web in 1989 which made information wirelessly shareable.
6. According to the HuffPost, Mr. Bernes-Lees uploaded the first-ever photo to the internet through the World Wide Web after creating it. The photo was of 4 women that worked with Bernes-Lee at the nuclear research laboratory CERN.
7. Ray Tomlinson, an American computer scientist invented the email in 1974. Although he sent the first email to himself, he does not remember what he wrote as the message. During that time, the email could only support plain text as there were no formatting features yet.
8. Four years after the invention of the email, Gary Thuerk, a computer seller, sent the first spam email over ARPANET, as reported by Buzzfeed News. His aim for spamming was to generate sales for his computers.
9. YouTube was invented in 2005 on Valentine’s Day by Steve Chen, Jawed Karim, and Chad Hurley. All three were former employees of PayPal, an American e-commerce company specializing in online money transfer.
10. On 23rd April 2005, Jawed Karim, one of the co-founders of YouTube uploaded the first-ever video on the platform. It was titled “Me at the Zoo”, and it featured Jawed spending time at the San Diego Zoo.
11. Twitter was created in March 2006 by Biz Stone, Evans Williams, Jack Dorsey, and Noah Glass in San Francisco, California. During the launch, Jack Dorsey typed the first-ever tweet which read “Just setting up my twttr.”
12. As of the last quarter of 2020, Twitter had more than 187 million users, with the US having the largest number of Twitter users, as published by the Statista Research Department.
Usage Statistics
13. Currently, there are over 4.6 billion internet users globally, 92.6% of whom access the internet using their mobile devices, as reported by Statista.
14. Common social media platforms on the internet include, among others, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok. Facebook is the most popular social media platform, having at least 2.6 billion users every month, according to Statista.
15. Between 2000 and 2020, the rate of internet usage worldwide increased by a whopping 1,266%, with the Middle East being among the places with the fastest-growing rate.
16. There are over 1.7 billion websites on the internet today. Even so, this number keeps fluctuating as more websites pop up and others are deleted from the internet.
17. While the number of websites on the internet is significantly high, only about 200 million of them are active. It is worth noting that at least 1.5 billion internet websites are inactive.
18. Google.com is the world’s most popular website. To give you an idea, it receives at least 92.5 billion visitors every month.
19. On average, Google.com processes about 63,000 search queries every second. This translates to more than 5.5 billion searches per day and 2 trillion per year, as reported by HubSpot.
20. A thousand computers are involved in retrieving an answer to a search query in 0.2 seconds, as per the Internet Live Statistics. The time takes for retrieval of an answer depends on the speed of the internet connection.
21. Every second, at least 6000 tweets are sent worldwide. This translates to about 500 million tweets every day.
22. As of 2021, a whopping 99% of internet users in the United States are aged between 18 and 29 years old. 75% of those aged 65 years old and above are also active internet users, as reported by Statista.
23. Google went live in 1998 and later expanded its services to social networking, email communication, cloud storage, and video sharing, among others.
24. Google Chrome is currently the most popular web browser, occupying a 64.92% market share. Others on the list are Safari, Firefox, Samsung Internet, UC Browser, Opera, and Internet Explorer occupying market shares of 15.97%, 4.33%, 3.29%, 2.94%, 2.34%, and 1.98% respectively.
25. Despite being the most attacked content management system (CMS), WordPress remains one of the most popular hosting sites. To give you an idea, it has a market share of 59.7% with more than 22 million active users worldwide. WordPress hosts some of the most authoritative websites, including, among others, Forbes, Facebook Blog, and The New York Times (NYT).
26. As of 2021, more than 10 billion devices were connected to the internet. They include, among others, computers, mobile phones, tablets, wireless routers, car GPS units, and servers. Expert projections indicate that this number would go higher in the coming years as the Internet of Things (IoT) technology grows in popularity.
Interesting Facts
27. Marcel Fernandes Filho, a Brazilian teen, went into the Guinness World Records as the fastest texter in the world. This was after he types a 25-word message in just 18.19 seconds, as reported by USA Today. The message read “The razor-toothed piranhas of the genera Serrasalmus and Pygocentrus are the most ferocious freshwater fish in the world. In reality they seldom attack a human.”
28. Due to the high demand for sharing information over long distances and using internet-enabled technology, it only took 5 years since its advent for the internet to gain 50 million users. Even now, the internet continues gaining massive popularity constantly as more people embrace technology.
29. The average yearly revenue for the online dating industry is at least $1 billion. It is worth noting that many people in the US are now willing to pay monthly subscription fees on dating sites to find love.
30. According to PC Magazine, internet surfing is a term that refers to the search for information on the internet by moving from one website to another through clicking on hyperlinks. The term was first used by Jean Armor Polly, a New York librarian who was among the first people to offer computers and internet access to the public. Jean is also known as the Net Mom.
31. Created in 2009 by Sina Corporation, Sina Weibo is a Chinese social media platform that is among the most popular sites in Asia. To give you an idea, Sina Weibo has at least 430 million active users every month, as reported by the New York Times.
32. Each Facebook user has a unique string of numbers that are connected to the profile for identification purposes. Take note that this number does not reveal your identity but only identifies your profile. For instance, the Facebook ID for Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive officer of Facebook, is 4.
33. Even though nearly half of the internet users are from Asia, India is the country that has the largest of its population offline. To give you an idea, a whopping 685 million people living in India have no access to the internet. They are followed by China, in which 582 million people are not connected to the internet.
34. On average, a typical U.S household spends about $1,141 per year on cable and internet bills. Even so, this figure significantly increased during the COVID-19 pandemic due to an increase in the number of Americans working from home.
35. During the pandemic, a majority of Americans used the internet for social media browsing, gaming, video conferencing, and streaming TV. This substantially increased the consumption rate, prompting the internet providers to put a limit on the usage, according to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ).
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