More than 80 percent of you are men. Actually, 84.83 percent, to be exact. That was the most surprising result of our readership survey. Men rule the Internet, and even more so, it seems, when it comes to Iranian sites.
There's plenty to be said about this disturbingly unfair fact, but we will leave the interpretations to you. In fact, your responses to our questionnaire speak volumes about not just our readership but also perhaps about the Iranian Internet community in general.
During 45 days starting May 11, 178 of you responded to the survey, which represented about 2.5 percent of our total readers during that period.
Least surprising: 91 percent of you are Iranian.
Most interesting: Almost 35 percent have been living outside Iran for 15 to 20 years. More than 55 percent have lived outside Iran for at least 11 years. Even so, 51 percent of you said you want MORE Persian articles.
Where do you live? More than 65 percent of you in the U.S. In other parts of the world, the biggest number of you are in Canada (6.8 percent), Scandinavia (4.5 percent), England (nearly 4 percent), and Australia, France and Germany (each between 2 to 3 percent). Only 1.7 percent of you are in Iran.
What are you? Some 32 percent described themselves as "professional", followed by "computer engineer" (slightly more than 20 percent), "student" (almost 20 percent), "researcher" (13.48 percent) and "business person" (6.21 percent).
Income: About 46 percent earn more than $50,000 a year. Slightly less than 20 percent earn between $30,000 and $50,000 and about 20 percent make less than $30,000. Fourteen percent did not respond.
Age: More than 60 percent between 25 and 35 years old. Only about 7.3 percent of you are over 45.
Marital status: A surprising 52.2 percent of you are married. (Since the vast majority of you are men, I wonder what your wives think about Internet surfing. Something to do when there's no sports on TV?). Only 1.1 percent of you admitted to being divorced and 42.1 percent claimed to be single. More than four percent skipped the question.
Hours surfing: Almost 8 percent spend more than 25 hours online every week. Some 40 percent spend five to 15 hours, and 16 percent spend 15 to 25 hours on the Net.
Browser: Netscape rules! Almost 81 percent of you use it to surf the Net. Microsoft's Internet Explorer is used by only 3.4 percent. Also 3.4 percent access the Net through America Online. More than 11 percent marked "other" browsers.
Speed: Nearly 40 percent of you enjoy modem speeds higher than 28,800 baud, which usually means you are hooked to a large network at a university or company. Almost 30 percent of you have 28,800-baud modems. Only 2.2 percent have modems slower than 14,400 baud.
Your favorite Iranian sites? Not surprisingly, 28 percent voted for THE IRANIAN as their favorite site. I'm flattered. But quite a few of you were probably just being polite. Why? Because 44 percent of you did not say how much you would pay for the magazine if it was on sale at your newsstand. I doubt if that means you think THE IRANIAN is priceless!
(The remaining 56 percent of you said you would pay an average of $3.00 per issue. Interestingly, many of you in higher income categories suggested lower prices!)
The Iranian Cultural and Information Center, commonly known as Tehran Stanford , got the second highest vote, or 13 percent, followed by Hamshahri newspaper (2.8 percent), PersiaNet (2.25 percent), Payvand (2.25 percent), the Iranian women's site, Zan (1.86 percent), Soroush (1.12 percent) and the Iranian newsgroup SCI (1.12 percent). Some 48.6 percent of you did not bother to share your preference.
Non-Iranian sites? It's difficult to say what your favorite one is since
60 percent of you left this question blank. But 9.5 percent of you said
CNN, followed by Yahoo
(4.5 percent) and ESPN (1.7 percent).
Well, that's all folks, but before I sign off, I would like to extend my most sincere thanks to Gelareh Abedi, who graciously agreed to do the calculations so that you and I could make sense of the survey. Without her, I would still be staring at hundreds of raw numbers, thinking, "Nothing is impossible. They could add themselves up any minute now."
And by the way, thank you.
J. Javid
New York
