• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, January 29, 2002

Middle America Catches Up

The early Internet technology adopting metropolitan areas of San Francisco, Seattle and New York are falling behind the growth rate of Web integration of middle American cities. Pittsburgh jumped to a 1.2 million Internet population, closely followed by Salt Lake City at almost 800,000, both growing about 20 percent in a year's time. The Internet population of Raleigh, N.C. grew 13.4 percent over the year, reaching 821,000 surfers. Rounding out the top five fastest growing wired cities, Philadelphia posted a 12.8 percent increase to nearly 3.1 million Internet surfers.

T.S. Kelly, director and principal analyst at NetRatings, said in the recently released report "cities in middle America post(ed) considerable gains as those residents integrate the Web into their everyday lives."

And a Digital Marketing Services study found that Pittsburgh is the top wired city for teens in the United States based on time spent online. The survey of more than 6,700 parents of teens and teens (age 12 to 17) found that Pittsburgh teens are online an average of 15.82 hours per week. The nationwide average for ages 12 to 17 is 12.28 hours per week.

Fastest Growing Wired Cities U.S At-Home Users

		12/2000	12/2001	% Growth
1.	Pittsburgh	1,027	1,237	20.4%
2.	Salt Lake City	811	973	20.0%
3.	Phoenix	1,228	1,437	17.0%
4.	Raleigh	724	821	13.4%
5.	Philadelphia	2,730	3,080	12.8%
6.	Cleveland	1,430	1,610	12.6%
7.	Minneapolis	1,481	1,647	11.2%
8.	Los Angeles	5,181	5,724	10.5%
9.	Kansas City	899	984	9.5%
10.	Detroit	1,821	1,971	8.2%

Source: AOL/DMS

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