Content Creation Online

44% of Internet users have created content for the
online world through building or posting to Web sites, creating blogs, and
sharing files

In a national phone survey between March 12 and May
20, 2003, the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that more than 53
million American adults have used the Internet to publish their thoughts,
respond to others, post pictures, share files and otherwise contribute to the
explosion of content available online. Some 44% of the nation‘sadult Internet
users (those 18 and over) have done at least one of the following:

• 21% of Internet users say they have posted photographs to Web sites.
• 20% say they have allowed others to download music or video files from their
  computers.
• 17% have posted written material on Web sites.
• 13% maintain their own Web sites.
• 10% have posted comments to an online newsgroup. A small fraction of them
  have posted files to a newsgroup such as video, audio, or photo files.
• 8% have contributed material to Web sites run by their businesses.
• 7% have contributed material to Web sites run by organizations to which they
  belong such as church or professional groups.
• 7% have Web cams running on their computers that allow other Internet users
  to see live pictures of them and their surroundings.
• 6% have posted artwork on Web sites.
• 5% have contributed audio files to Web sites.
• 4% have contributed material to Web sites created for their families.
• 3% have contributed video files to Web sites.
• 2% maintain Web diaries or Web blogs, according to respondents to this phone
  survey. In other phone surveys prior to this one, and one more recently fielded
  in early 2004, we have heard that between 2% and 7% of adult Internet users have
  created diaries or blogs. In this survey we found that 11% of Internet users
  have read the blogs or diaries of other Internet users. About a third of these
  blog visitors have posted material to the blog.

—Content Creation Online (Pew Internet Trust)

Thanks for the link, Rosemary.

I’m not sure that permitting file-sharing should be in the same category as providing original content to the web, but it’s still an impressive set of statistics.