Seemingly if its a large number divisible by 10, we like 10 a lot, then it's going to give some bored features editor an excuse to reprint this research, er speculation by anal ysts ( nope that space is not a bug in the blog;) as fact.

That is that the Internet now has it's billionth user.

The interesting part , and one that I found surprising, follows.

"E-commerce will continue to grow. It typically takes people two to three years from when they first get online to feel confident enough to buy from websites. "....

I'm really going to have to read their research on that, i.e which age groups,cultural backrounds constitutes  the three year lag.  

..."The billion-user Internet is a highly diverse environment that has moved far beyond the elite in Silicon Valley and other global technology hubs. There are hundreds of millions of old people online  and there are even more users without fancy graduate degrees. Users are not like you, and the difference between elite and mainstream users is getting bigger every day."...  (  What is this tautology  Tuesday? )

The latter, bold, part I am painfully aware off,   but they make an incorrect assumption here. Elite users are widely varied in their behaviours and often contain pretty," petty",  tribal distinctions  that makes it looks more  like an expanding universe with the "elite" heading to the edges while the mass in the middle poddles along.  

User's are like me, to pretend otherwise is a conceit that ,while my ego can stand it, under objective examination,   doesn't hold up.    

TBC