Howeru results

Enhance Media released their Howeru (pronounced: how e are you) report yesterday.

The report covers a lot of areas of internet use, however, their data around geographical e-ness (my made up term - not theirs) seems to have caused the biggest stir.   The top and bottom of their league table is as follows:

Britain’s most e-literate towns               
1 London
2 Canterbury
3 Cambridge                                             
                                          
Britain’s least e-literate towns
1 Torquay
2 Bournemouth
3 Twickenham

According to Tim's blog the residents of Derby have been getting all over excited about this.  I don't know why - they are only at number 7 in the list of least e-literate towns.  I live in Torquay (well 10 miles down the road) and I've not heard anyone making a fuss.  Of course, that's because the results have been published on line and I am the only person in the region with internet access (apparently!).

Moving onto other data from the report:

97% used email; 97% used a search engine; 94% downloaded software; 93% read an online newspaper/news site; 88% used a price comparison site; 88% obtained directions/map; 83% downloaded music/video; 81% used online banking; 71% applied for a job online; 67% used a social networking site; 42% sold something on an auction site; 29% created their own blog and 19% bought something for more than £1,000.

The test also revealed the top 20 websites. BBC, Facebook and Google, were top in that order. Other favourites included Wikipedia, YouTube, Digg and Piczo.

You can buy the full results as a pdf from the Enhance Media site.  If you want to consider some of the possible applications for recruitment take a look at a review I wrote of Tim's presentation from the Enhance conference.