Canada is the most web-addicted nation on earth
By Gurmukh Singh, IANSWednesday, December 29, 2010
TORONTO - Canada is the most web-addicted nation on the planet.
Canadians spend more time on the web and its offshoots - Facebook, YouTube and Twitter - than people anywhere else in the world. They are neck and neck with Indians for the number of Facebook accounts, says a report.
According to comScore, the leading online measurement service, Canadian online users log in more than 2,500 minutes a month, followed by Israelis with about 2,300 minutes. Users in a few other countries cross the 2,000-minute mark.
Giving figures for the month of April, comScore said nearly 68 per cent of the Canadian population was online, compared to 62 per cent in France and the United Kingdom, 60 per cent in Germany, 59 per cent in the US, 57 per cent in Japan, and 36 per cent in Italy.
In this country which leads the world in internet access, Canadians also lead the world in various offshoots of the web - Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, according to the report.
“In Canada, YouTube per capita consumption of video is No. 1 in the world. It’s just absolutely crazy in terms of how passionate Canadians are about YouTube,” the Canadian Press quotes Chris O’Neill, Canada’s country director for Google, as saying.
According to him, more than 21 million Canadians out of its population of 34 million visit YouTube each month, compared to 147 million Americans in a population of over 310 million.
But considering the U.S. has 10 times Canada’s population, Canadians are way ahead on a per capita basis, says the report.
Canadians also watch more videos each month, with an average of 147 as compared to 100 per US viewer.
With more than 17 million Facebook users, Canada has more than half of its population hooked to this socializing web site.
India and Canada are neck and neck for the 9th and 10th positions on the list of countries with the most Facebook accounts, according to the report.
Though no figures are available for Twitter accounts in Canada, their number has jumped 75 per cent since the beginning of the year, according to Twitter.
In fact, Canadian pop sensation Justin Bieber, who is just 16, has more than 6.4 million followers on Twitter.
(Gurmukh Singh can be contacted at gurmukh.s@ians.in)
