In 2003, respondents identified their home phones as the technology they valued most, followed by TV, cell phones and Internet access. At the same time, the percentage of consumers saying they would have a hard time giving up their Blackberry or other wireless e-mail device has increased six-fold in the past five years, from 6% of American adults in 2002 to 36% in 2007.
Industry insiders say it's the age of digital lifescapes, or lifestyles formed through the fusion of technology, social connections, information and communication.
New technologies have become more important because of greater use, industry experts explain. The Center for the Digital Future at the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication describes computers as increasingly widespread. In 2002, 29% of the households surveyed did not have a computer and only 3% had four or more. Today, only 19% are without computers and 9% have four or more.
The 2008 Digital Future Project also found:
- Eighty% of Internet users age 17 and older consider the Internet to be an important source of information for them -- up from 66% in 2006--and higher than television (68%), radio (63%) and newspapers (63%).
- Membership in online communities has more than doubled in the past three years. More than half of online community members (54%) log into their community at least once a day, and 71% of members rate their community as very important or extremely important. A large and growing percentage of those members--55%-- say they feel as strongly about their online communities as they do about their real-world communities.
- Internet users spend an average of 15.3 hours each week online, more than an hour more than in 2006, and a growing number surf the Internet from web-enabled mobile phones or computers equipped with wireless access cards.
- More than three-quarters of home users access the Internet through a broadband connection, an increase of 25% in one year.
- The most common online activities are checking e-mail (96%), Internet surfing without a specific destination (71%), looking for news online (60%), finding product information (43%), conducting online banking or other financial services (38%), instant messaging (37%), playing online games (35%) or searching for humorous content (25%).
- About 16% of Internet users go online to find or check a fact at least daily, and 7% go online at least once a day to look up the definition of a word.
"Traditional off-line activities are moving online," explains Ramamurthy one of the top three executives at Yahoo! Real Estate. Just as in the real world, virtual users "want pictures, video and the opportunity to connect with other users for communication and information.
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