Internet user

Americans are increasingly spending more online time visiting social networking websites, reports a new Nielsen study “What Americans Do Online.” The information may be useful for businesses who want to find additional ways to attract more consumers to their products and services.

Google is again calling Internet users to help it with suggestions on how to better combat spam just as it did it last year. Matt Cutts who leads Google's webspam team again addressed the online surfers on his personal blog asking for suggestions for webspam projects for the year.

30% of the global web access is now handled by Mozilla Firefox, according to the company estimates. This week the open source company provided its first ever quarterly analyst report titled The State of the Internet. On the basis of the statistics given by the four separate online research houses - StatCounter, Quantcast, Net Applications, and Gemius – Mozilla claims that its influence is the strongest in Europe where it owns 39.2% of the market.

According to the BBC World Service global study 30% of web surfers think that Internet is a quite good place for finding a boyfriend or girlfriend.

The survey which polled about 11,000 Internet users across 19 countries reveals that India and Pakistan lead the list of countries where Internet subscribers are more enthusiastic about online introductions.

59% of Indians and 60% of Pakistanis using the Internet think it is a good place for dating.

Researches of the British scientists revealed that the Internet surfing is closely tied to depressions people suffer. Yet, it remains unclear if it is the Internet that causes depression or whether it is the depression that makes people spend much time online.

"This study reinforces the public speculation that over-engaging in websites that serve to replace normal social function might be linked to psychological disorders like depression and addiction," the study's lead author, Catriona Morrison, wrote in the journal Psychopathology.

Mozilla is hosting Winter ‘09 Design Challenge that focuses on improvement of the home tab for its browser Firefox 4.0. The current plan is to move the home button down into the tab bar as a standalone and always-accessible tab so as to make it more powerful.