[2] Awesome Power of the Internet:
History's Greatest Advertising Venue!

Every now and then, some new technology reshapes society by revolutionizing the way people receive information and communicate with each other.

"The Internet has revolutionized the computer and communications world like nothing before. The invention of the [printing press,] telegraph, telephone, radio, [television] and computer set the stage for this unprecedented integration of capabilities. The Internet is at once a world-wide broadcasting capability, a mechanism for information dissemination, and a medium for collaboration and interaction between individuals and their computers without regard for geographic location."
Quote from "A Brief History of the Internet"
published by the Internet Society (ISOC)

Do you "need to know" this? Are these factoids important to your business success?

Absolutely!

How It All Began, and Why It is So Important to Your Business:

What we now call the "Internet" actually began as a top secret Defense Department project by DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency). Established in 1958 in response to the Soviet Union's launch of the world's first man-made satellite Sputnik in 1957, DARPA's mission was to keep U.S. military technology ahead of our Nation's enemies.

By 1962, research had begun on an "Intergalactic Computer Network" to enable instant communication among U.S. Military installations. The first electronic message was sent over ARPANET (the Defense Department's predecessor of today's Internet) at 10:30 pm, October 29, 1969. Almost immediately, and over the next two decades, groups like USENIX and services like USENET, CompuServe and The Source were making non-Defense portions of the Internet accessible to the public ... usually at metered costs of up to $10 per online hour — or more.

And technologically savvy entrepreneurs quickly saw the 'Net's commercial potential.

The Explosion of New "Web" Technology Made the 'Net Accessible to Everybody:

The World Wide Web was "invented" in 1989, by English computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee, at the European Council for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland. But very few people used it for the first few years except researchers at Universities and laboratories around the world, competing and collaborating to advance this exciting new aspect of internet technology.

The December 1993 release of "Mosaic", an easy-to-use web browser that worked with both Microsoft Windows and Apple Macintosh, suddenly made the Internet accessible to non-geeks, creating a worldwide technological and social revolution almost overnight.

Mosaic had gotten its start at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA-UIUC), at that time the most advanced research facility of its type in the world.

[Want to read an interesting factoid about how "Mosaic" became "Netscape"?] [No Java?].

The establishment of NCSA and the research that led to Mosaic's development were funded by the High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991, introduced and sponsored by then-Senator Al Gore (D-Tenn). This legislation is still referred to as the Gore Bill.

The "Web" Reached 50% of U.S. Households in Less Than Five Years!

Following 1993's release of Mosaic, Internet usage by the American public exploded! AOL, the largest service provider at that time, grew from 1 million members in 1994 to 5 million in 1996; and in 1997, AOL's membership surpassed the 10-million mark. Costs of going online had plummeted after AOL introduced flat-rate pricing in December 1996, following a rash of 'netsurfer complaints that, even at 5 cents a minute, some AOL members had been spending over $1,000 monthly. Other service providers soon followed suit, and by 1997, AOL members were averaging 23 hours a month online (compared to 7 hours a month before the introduction of flat-rate pricing).
— New York Times, 11/18/97, "AOL Reaches 10 Million Subscribers"

By 1998, E-MAIL ADVERTISING was already generating a BILLION DOLLARS A YEAR IN REVENUE and more than 50% of U.S. households were spending time online every day — less than five years after Mosaic's release.

[By comparison, Television took almost thirty years to reach 50% market penetration in the United States. The first regularly scheduled TV broadcasts began in July, 1928 at Wheaton, MD (a Washington DC suburb), and a second TV station started two months later in New York City. But it wasn't until 1957 that Television had reached 50% of American households.]

ONLINE — a new place for Americans to conduct Business!

By 2003, about two-thirds of Americans were online, and doing business online — even in the middle of a "recession"! A study of changing trends in Internet usage from 2000 to 2003 stated: "Online Americans' experience with the commercial side of the Internet has expanded dramatically in spite of the economic slump. Financial and transaction activities such as online banking ... have grown more than any other genre of activity."
— Pew Internet & American Life Project: "America's Online Pursuits", December 2003

Today, the vast majority of Americans can access the Internet at home, at work, at school, or at a nearby library. As affordable broadband service continues to proliferate, U.S. households that are NOT "wired" are rapidly becoming almost as rare as households without television.

Who's Using the Internet Today, and Why They Are So Important to Your Business:

Internet users tend to be significantly above average in both income and educational level, and include consumers your business should be reaching. Much of the data below was gathered in early 2006 by Princeton Research Associates for Pew Internet & American Life Project, and so that data may be a little outdated. However, it does show the general trends.

Income data for heads of household earning over $100K (i.e., most affluent market segment, roughly 19% of the U.S. Population) was gathered March-July 2008 by Ipsos Mendelsohn.