Re: [MLUG] most wired local markets...

[Jonathan King <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

On Wed, 4 Apr 2001, Mike Miller wrote:

> On Wed, 4 Apr 2001, Jonathan King wrote:
> >
> > ...I guess this is another way to approximate relative geekiness:
> >
> >    http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/010403/2129.html
> >
> > Interestingly, estimating internet penetration is a new line of work
> > for the good old Nielsen folks.  Unfortunately, they only seem to look
> > at big (1,000,000+) markets.  But it turns out that 70% of local
> > households have net access in Portland and Seattle, so they're #1 and
> > #2.  KC (61%) is #10, St. Louis (60%) is #12.  Seeing numbers that
> > high for St. Louis (in particular) suggests to me that the Columbia
> > number would have to be right up there near the top.  (Except that if
> > they included smaller markets, they would probably find other college
> > towns with ludicrously high numbers, too.)
> 
> It must be another one of those "metro area" statistics.  There's no
> way St. Louis has that high penetration, and there's no way St. Louis
> has 1,000,000 people.  It's good to see such high percentages though.  
> Really good.  The 'net isn't going away, but the NASDAQ might!

Actually, they claim "local market", which is presumably sort of
like the "local media market" (which in some cases can be even bigger than
a metro area).

But I still don't know what Mike has against metro areas; the suburbs
aren't going away. :-)  Seriously, St. Louis the city is down to 348,000
people (never did clear 750K, though), but over 2,000,000 people have
close enough connections with the place to make it a useful unit of
analysis.  I mean, sure, Clayton is over on the other side of some line in
the sand, but that's partly because St. Louis never got to annex its
suburbs to the degree that even KC did (and much less lots of places out
west like San Diego).

I think a much stronger argument would be that the notion of really trying
to tie net usage (and users) to any geographically defined area is fairly
silly already and probably getting sillier every day.  Being on the net is
basically the opposite of being wherever you "really" are.  Thank goodness
nobody necessarily treats you differently just because you're from Baton
Rouge or Boston or Boonville.

jking

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