Information, not entertainment.

The way people use the web has changed dramatically over the past few years. There has been an enormous increase in the use of search engines such as Google to find information - with 57% mainly using search engines, compared with just 19% in 2005.

For internet users, the web is now a more trusted source of information than television - and the amount of television they watch has declined. Looking for information about health online is the most popular service nowadays. So, Internet overtakes television to become biggest advertising sector in the UK.

The UK has become the first major economy where advertisers spend more on internet promotional business than on television one. IAB figures show that of the total £1.75bn spent on internet advertising, £1.05bn, or 60%, was spent on search advertising on websites including Google.

It has taken the internet little more than a decade to become the biggest advertising sector in the uk.

Mark Sweney. The Guardian, Wednesday 30 September 2009.

Web users would turn first to the internet to find out a wide range of information, from planning a trip to finding a local school to comparing prices of products they want to buy. The number of adults who bought or ordered goods or services online reached 31 million in 2010. These Internet shoppers represented 62 per cent of all adults. The most popular products bought online were clothes and sporting goods.

The internet is worth £100bn to the UK economy, more than 7% of national income. If it were an industry in its own right, the internet would be more than twice as large as the UK hotel and restaurant market and nearly as big as the financial services sector, which accounted for 9% of GDP in 2009. The findings come in a report for Google, the internet's most successful company. The study, by Boston Consulting Group, US consultants, places a value on the UK internet market for the first time.

The popularity of shopping for goods and services online has also helped to fuel a boom in online advertising as companies spend heavily to attract users to their sites. Britain has the biggest online advertising market anywhere outside the US. It is worth around £3.5bn a year.

James Robinson. The Guardian, Thursday 28 October 2010

Social networking.

One of the fastest growing uses of the internet is for social networking. 43 per cent of Internet users in Britain posting messages to social networking sites or chat sites, blogs etc. Social networking activities proved to be most popular among 16 to 24-year-olds with 75 per cent posting messages, while 50 per cent of this age group uploaded self created content.

OxIS finds that 42% of students have created a profile on a social networking site such as Facebook or MySpace, but just 15% of the employed and 2% of retired people. One in four internet users has met a friend online that they did not know before using the internet - and half of those have met them in person. Perhaps surprisingly, it is older people and the retired who are most likely to meet online friends in person - and men rather than women who do more social networking. And e-mail and internet messaging are still by far the most dominant means of online communication.

Personal content.

The number of people who upload content of their own, rather than read that of others, is constantly growing. Students are twice as likely as others to create content online.

Even the English Royal Family launched YouTube Channel in 2007 as an attempt to 'widen the Royal's appeal.'

As part of the launch, Queen Elizabeth II delivered her annual address online on The Royal Channel. The channel is intending on showing some of the history of the Queen and also connecting directly to the people outside of the TV.

The Internet Generation.

The internet economy is likely to grow by 10% a year for the next five years and could contribute up to 13% of GDP a year by 2015, the report's authors conclude. It is already larger than the utility and transport industries combined.

That growth will depend in large part on whether targets for broadband penetration are met, however. The government has said it wants everyone to have internet access at a speed that would allow users to download video content by 2015.

Twenty-five years after the first UK website address was registered, and over a decade since the dotcom crash threatened to wipe out a generation of fledgling British internet companies, the report also highlights the success of small firms in using the internet to boost global sales. The UK now exports goods and services worth £2.80 for every £1 it imports. Google's annual turnover was £23.6bn last year, almost a quarter of the £100bn contribution the entire internet made to the UK economy in 2009.