(My inspiration for this article came from Dustin Hoffman in Rainman—don’t say I didn’t warn you!)

The year 2009 was a bountiful one for the Web, and the time has come to take a look back. Get out your calculators (for you Mac users, it’s in Finder/Applications/Calculator and for you PC users, Start menu/Accessories/Calculator) because I am about to unveil numbers, followed by more numbers, and then, just when you think you’ve had enough, even more numbers! (By the way, a calculator is not required to understand this article, but you might want to use one if you want to have any hope of understanding!)

How many e-mails were sent last year? How many people use Facebook? How many Internet users are there around the world? All these questions (and many more!) will be answered in this article.

E-mails
Did you know that in 12 months, 90 trillion (90 million million!) e-mails were sent? If this number seems high, it’s partly my fault—I’m single-handedly responsible for almost 103. The average number of e-mails sent daily is roughly 247 billion, which is the equivalent of the population of red ants on the planet. (Don’t ask me why, but I like the idea of comparing the Web to ants. I’m getting all National Geographic on you.) Spam accounted for 81% of all e-mails sent (so we can conclude that everyone got that Viagra e-mail!). In fact, spam has increased by 24% since 2008 (the population is indeed aging and Viagra is becoming increasingly useful, especially if we want our citizens to be upstanding!).

Social Media

Facebook has 350 million users—most of whom are desperately trying to get me to join, but in vain! Half of those 350 million users log in every day. (No comment.) Every month, some 2.5 billion photos are uploaded to Facebook. (I wonder how many photos I’m in—and how many people who don’t know me are wondering “Hey, who’s that guy in the background?”)

57% of Twitter users are American. But wait, there’s more: Ashton Kutcher alone has 4.25 million users who religiously follow his tweets!!! He is Twitter’s most popular user. I wonder if Demi follows his tweets! If you’re interested in joining the ranks of Ashton followers, his user name is @aplusk.

Internet Users
In September 2009, there were no less than 1.73 billion Internet users worldwide. I am number 250,145,758, and damn proud of it (because I beat Ashton Kutcher—booya!) There was an 18% increase in the number of Web users since last year. It should come as no surprise that most Internet users are from Asia (42.6% to be exact). A quarter are European and a tenth are from Australia and surrounding countries.

Rapid-Fire Numbers
234 million – the number of Web sites as of December 15, 2009
47 million – the number of sites that saw the light of day in 2009
81.8 million – the number of “.com” sites
46.6% – the Apache Server’s market share
4 billion – the number of photos on Flickr (October 2009)
1 billion – the number of videos streamed daily on Youtube
182 – the number of videos the average American Internet user views per month
3 – the number of articles I published on our blog in one week (monumental!)

There you have it. It’s time to turn the page on 2009. ( I know, I know, you were waiting to read this article first. Go on now, you have my blessing.) Let’s look forward now, and see what 2010 has in store. As for me, I’m going to check Twitter to see what Ashton Kutcher’s up to today.

Sources
Netcraft (Web sites and servers). Internet World Stats (Internet users). Radicati Group (e-mails). McAfee (spam). BlogPulse, Facebook and Twittercounter (social media). Flickr and Facebook (photos).