My wife and I came home from a trip recently to find that our land line and Internet service were not working. A call (on my cellphone) to the phone company indicated there was "a break in the line."
In addition to wondering why it was going to take them 4 days to get someone out to look into it, this has made me realize just how dependent we have become on the Internet. We use it to look up phone numbers, recent news, movie show times; to Skype with our kids in college; to retrieve documents from our computers at work; to write and post blogs...a lot of things. Is it any wonder that marketers want to be online?
Statistics from the US Census Bureau, Nielson Online and others indicate that Internet usage in North America has reached 78.6% and 32.7% worldwide. That is a lot. But is also means that means that 21.4% of North Americans (including us last weekend) and 67.3% of the population worldwide are NOT plugged into the Internet. That is more than 74 million people in North America and 4.6 billion worldwide who can't read this blog. Would you mind printing it out for them?
I can't think of any companies that would consciously thumb their noses at a market of more than 4.6 billion people. Not even Wal-Mart. I think that companies would be wise, as they engage their enthusiasm for the bright, shiny social media, to take a careful look at their market and make sure that a good portion of it isn't a part of the 4.6 billion.
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