August 29, 2008 – (HOSTSEARCH.COM) – A survey by web host 1&1 Internet (http://www.1and1.com) suggests Americans have the most “web-friendly” culture, it was reported yesterday. According to the survey, Americans “use the web more effectively to gain friends” with 53% of Americans having made “at least one friend online”. Germans follow Americans with 51% gaining a friend online, and then the French and Spanish with less than 50% having a friend they found online. Far behind the pack are the British with only 16% making a friend online.
The study, which took in 5000 consumers, suggests Americans are the most critical, with 76% “quickly judging others solely based on online material (photos, blog entries, resumes, Facebook profiles, etc.)”. It also found that 76% of Americans believe you can “make a reliable overall assessment of a person online” while only 46% of Britons felt the same. 57% Spaniards, 54% of French and 43% of Germans agreed that it is “not possible to judge an individual from their online material alone”.
“It appears that Americans are leading the pack in using the Internet for social purposes,” explained 1&1 Internet Inc.’s CEO, Mr. Oliver Mauss. “Based on the Americans' success in achieving friends via the web, a person's online identity may be a reliable way to make an evaluation for a relationship. Therefore, it is highly recommended to use a controllable way to display personal material online for accurate representation, such as with a personal website."
Reflecting the degree to which Americans judge each other online, the US public is more concerned over the issue of their own personal online identity than Europeans. 77% of Americans admit to having concerns about how they may appear online, compared to half of Britons (49%), 45% of Germans, 44% of French and only 38% of Spanish. The research suggests that the more seriously a nation takes personal online material, the more success its residents enjoy in establishing meaningful online relationships.
1&1 Internet Inc. is a subsidiary of United Internet, a profitable public company with a market cap of $5 billion. 1&1 was founded in 1988 and hosts more than 10 million domain names, while more than 55,000 servers run in the company's five state-of-the-art data centers. 1&1's global community is over 7 million customer contracts strong. The company's U.S. headquarters is located in Chesterbrook, Pennsylvania, USA.
