Who Uses What Online Tool for Which Reason: Oxford Study

Here is a comprehensive study of online tool use with data taken from December 1, 2006 to February 16, 2007. During this period the survey was completed by 1369 respondents, mostly Continuing Education students and academics at the University of Oxford. So it is very specialized sample but still useful. Thre are very nice graphics. For example, you can see that many are using the Wikipedia for study or work and very few are using the social bookmarking tools, del.icio.us or Stumbleupon. There is also a strong use of discussion forums, along with some use of the World of Warcraft. About a fourth write a blog while about two thirds read blogs. Some read blogs for study but they mostly do it for fun and socially. About half use You Tube, mostly for fun. About a third are on MySpace and about half of that number are on Facebook.

I do not see any surprises here but it is useful data to back up your intuitions. It is a Creative Commons project and asked for attribution to be to ‘David White, JISC funded ‘SPIRE’ project 2007.’ Here is some more context to the study. Thanks to Hylton Jolliffe for sharing this report. web 2.0