“Brasil deve atingir base de 37 milhões de internautas até o final de 2007″

“Brazil will reach 37 million internet users by the end of 2007″

http://idgnow.uol.com.br/internet/2007/06/18/idgnoticia.2007-06-18.5697265041

Just trying to clear things up.

Do you really think newspapers are in the best position to evaluate what’s happening on the web? From my point of view they will always provide the conservative analysis on such facts. On the other hand, it sounds obvious to me that a perspective built on blog quotations will naturally present a more radical view on the social changes brought by the Internet.

For me, the real interesting thing about our present time is the possibility of having both perspectives (and many others) available so that we can listen to them all and debate. Thanks for commenting.

The Gazeta Mercantil had an interesting package in its weekend section about the flat rate of expansion of domestic internet usage: flat over the past several years, and still only 13.4 million users out of 180 million persons — among whom access to television is almost universal. You’ve seen it: big satellite dishes outside the meanest palafitas and barracos …

So the proposition seems absurd on the face of it. In the main article, Anderson Gurgel writes that the digital revolution in Brazil “is merely recreating the structure of social inequality that has persisted in Brazil for 500 years” … and I have to say that’s pretty much how it looks to me, too, though maybe ONID and an expanded telecenter program will help.

I wonder if NetRatings/IBOPE factored in usage there and at public terminals as well as paid private accounts?

Not to mention folks who get online “puxando um gato” …

And I also have to say: We just installed cable broadband here in Sampa and the latency to North American URLs makes YouTube impossible to use in streaming mode … and the downloads take forever.

Do you have this problem, too? My wife’s blog lives on a server in the U.S., too, and readers started complaining a few weeks ago that it was very slow to load.