The Internet Likely to Pass 3 Billion Users in 2014

Twenty years ago, most people hadn’t even heard of the internet. Today the situation is a tad bit different. The most recent number we could find for how many users there are on the internet is 2.48 billion, but that was in 2012.

As if that wasn’t enough, based on how the internet has grown historically it is very likely that it will pass 3 billion users in 2014.

Some perspective:

• In 2000, right at the height of the dot-com bubble, there were 391 million internet users globally. That was 10 times as many as in 1995.
• In 2005, when Web 2.0 was the buzzword of choice, there were 1 billion internet users. Or put another way, there are more users on Facebook today than there were on the entire internet in 2005.
• In 2012 there were 6.3 times as many internet users as in 2000, and almost 64 times as many as in 1995
• 3 billion would be roughly 42% of the world population.

Not only are there more people on the internet these days, the quality of internet access is miles better now than just a few years ago. Widespread broadband internet access is making internet services possible today that simply would not have been practical before.

Here at Atomia we provide technology for web hosting companies, so all this growth is of course good for business. But we are also huge fans of the power of the internet. For millions, it has become a great equalizer, giving voice and opportunity to people who would otherwise never have been able to reach a wide enough audience. It has been truly transformative for society, and has literally triggered revolutions. For us it’s also a business, but it’s a business that empowers people. We love that.

Data source: Internet usage numbers from the excellent Wolfram|Alpha.