Despite advances in the multimedia resources, the Internet remains primarily a communications and information service s-mail, the most popular use, and chat rooms are rapidly replacing postal and telephone service form many users personal correspondence. Between 1992 and 1997,e-mail users grew from 2 percent to 15 percent of the population, and this proportion could reach 50 percent by 2001. E-mail volume is already huge over 100 million messages each day. In fact, consumers responding to a recent survey said that they spend at least one third of their online time on e-mail. Beyond that correspondence function, the top four reasons people use the Internet or online services are research, education, news, and entertainment.
Online shopping remains low on the list.
Only about 10 percent on Net surfers consider themselves online shoppers, although about one- quarter has bought something online. Cyber shopping is increasing, however, with development of methods to reduce online security problems. The most popular site categories are shown in this figure Business uses the Internet and web in more specific ways than consumers. Executives turn to the web to gather information about their rivals or to assess industry trends. For example, executives can visit competitors Web sites to learn about new- product announcements and check financial reports.