What people are really doing on the Web

[Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt myrealbox com>]

At the SXSW conference in March, one of the sessions was on "What  
people are really doing on the Web".
<http://2006.sxsw.com/interactive/programming/panels/? 
action=show&id=IAP060064>
<http://sxswnotes.pbwiki.com/ 
What%20People%20Are%20Really%20Doing%20On%20The%20Web>

Some statistics presented that are relevant to browser design:
*   One in three of people surveyed had read a Weblog in the past 30
    days; one in four in the past 24 hours. Most of these are personal
    diaries.
*   One in ten had written in a Weblog in the past 30 days.
*   One in five had used an online dating service in the past 30 days.
*   How often people use search varies widely depending on how many
    pages there are in languages that they know. (For example, Russians
    search much less often than Americans.)
*   People aged 13-24 using Yahoo Search are most often searching for
    music, sex, communication, shopping, and games, in that order.
*   Mothers using Yahoo are most commonly accessing financial
    information, communication, and games, in that order.
*   The most commonly searched for word on Yahoo is "google", and
    the fourth most common is "yahoo". (My guess: there are a lot of
    people who don't understand URLs.)

Some ideas for how Epiphany could make these things easier:
*   Better integration of Web pages, bookmarks, and feeds.
*   Spell-check.
*   Let people save a half-written Weblog post (an entire Web page with
    a half-filled-out form) as a draft that they can return to later.
*   Include Preview buttons for partially-downloaded music files in the
    download manager.
*   Include a financial search engine (such as Google Finance) in the
    default set of search engines.
*   Let people easily associate Weblogs with address book entries and
    buddy list entries.

--
Matthew Paul Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/