Monday, November 21, 2005

Everybody Loves to Search!

Every once in a while, a break-through study will come out and tell the world something new and interesting. The Pew Internet & American Life Project Report: Search engine use is not one of those studies.

Instead of something cool, this study reports the fact that more people are searching online. It also notes that "search" is now the second most popular "activity" online, coming in after "email". In fact, the release states that "the use of search engines is edging up on email as a primary internet activity on any given day".

This strikes me as odd, since "searching" isn't really the same sort of "activity" as email. Email is an end, while search is more of a means to an end. When someone searches it is only because they are trying to do one of the real most popular internet activities which are:

#1 - Look at stuff (words, pictures, movies)
#2 - Click on stuff (mostly links)
#3 - Type stuff (forms, blogs, etc)

While some may dabble in the area of recreational search, I seriously doubt that such an activity is becoming mainstream (though I did show my wife the Google Snake game recently).

In other news, close monitoring of my online behavior indicates that the use of sarcasm is likely to increase on this blog by about 14-18% in the next 3-6 months.

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