The Harvard Business blog had an article the other day that was, aptly titled, “Five Mind-Blowing Web Stats.” They were, in fact, mind-blowing. The stats boiled down look like this:

1. There has been a 40,000-fold increase in websites from 15 years ago. We’ve gone from 5,000 to 200+ million.
2. The blogosphere is doubling between once and twice a year, and there are nearly 1 million blog posts per day.
3. There have been over 5 billion tweets.
4. Google receives nearly 2 billion queries per day. Facebook is adding 700,000 new users per day.
5. Half of the top-ten websites are between 5-6 years old. Start-ups have more potential than ever to explode and take someone’s spot.

In light of this and a recent article from ReadWriteWeb that states blog posts have a longer shelf life, a few thoughts pop into my mind:

• We are well on our way to becoming a web-synergistic culture. For instance, in the last week I have found myself on more than one occasion responding to a tweet by sending that person a text. Or vice versa. Someone might email me and I respond with a direct message. Or a quick text. Or I might just do it the old fashioned way and go see them. Point being, the media we use to communicate are beginning to overlap with one another.
• After taking a look at my Google Dashboard, I became slightly alarmed at just how much information Google knows about me. What do they know about you? What will we do if Google ever decides to start charging for their services? At what point does technology become “too big to fail”?
• Twitter is here to stay. Words like “tweet,” “DM,” “hashtag,” will become a part of the cultural fabric and the “at sign” will become the most famous punctuation mark ever.
• The growth of Facebook is staggering. I hesitate only a little in saying this, but it’s not going anywhere either. Facebook, in my opinion, is not the next MySpace.

One of the primary reasons I believe the Internet has flourished in the way that it has is because people want to be connected–to information and to each other. Community is a meta-theme of the Internet. Keep that in mind.

Do these stats surprise you? Confuse you? Scare you? What do you think are some implications of Harvard Business’s findings?

HT: Jeremy Anderberg for the research

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Contributor: Justin Wise

A religious deviant who enjoys coffee, collared shirts, spending time with his wife and son, learning about quantum physics and creatively exploring the riches of the Spirit of Christ. Culture + Faith + Technology. Contact the author