Médiamétrie, a French research institute, published its first survey dedicated to Web 2.0 this week. It analyzes the practises of French internauts over the age of 15 that surf ‘assiduously’, meaning that they connect every day or nearly. This category represents 72% of the total, or 17,7 million people.

83,7% of these - 14,8 million, are ‘contributors’: they mail in forums, comment on blogs, give their opinions on services or products or become beta testers.

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‘Creators’ of multimedia content represents more than 3,1 million of these regular users. They create their own forums or blogs, or distribute audio & video content, providing more evidence that the promise of Web 2.0 to place the user at the centre of new technologies on the Net, is taking place.

Source: L’atelier

Also, web use overtakes newspapers.

The time European consumers spend online has, for the first time, overtaken the hours they devote to newspapers & magazines, a study by Jupiter Research, published by the Financial Times, has revealed.

“In France, where 79% of online households have broadband connections, the typical user is online for five hours a week, compared with three hours in Germany, which has a broadband penetration rate of 42%”.

“The fact that internet consumption has passed print consumption is an important landmark for the establishement of the internet in Europe,” said Mark Mulligan, research director at Jupiter.

“This shift in the balance of power will increasingly shape content distribution strategies, advertising spend allocation and communication strategies.”