Thursday, August 29, 2013

The next billion #Internet users III

At the end of the year the number of Internet users is expected to reach 2,7 billion users. The expectation is that in 2017 there will be 3.7 billion users. This means that in 2017 most people will still not be connected to the Internet.

Recently Mr Zuckerberg of Facebook fame presented Internet.org. It aims to bring the people who are waiting for the "last mile" to be bridged. In an interview in Wired, you can read about the vision behind this project.

The numbers of the Internet Service Providers are from before the announcement of this new project. When people are getting on the Internet even faster, it will certainly change the dynamics of the Internet even more. It is not obvious what data will be most sought after by the people who will be new on the Internet.

With all its encyclopaedic information, Wikipedia seems to be well placed to serve many more people the sum of all knowledge. However, much of that information will not be accessible to the many people because it is not available in a language they know. With Wikidata it will be possible to maintain data and present it in the many languages it supports.

We do want well written articles but presentations of the core data of subjects may fill in the gap.
Thanks,
        GerardM

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