What if the World Was the Size of Each Country’s Online Population

Pre discussion questions

What do you think internet ‘online population’ means?

Why do you think some countries have more internet users? Some less?

Ever wondered what the world would look like if countries were the size of their online populations?

Nominet is the official place where UK domain names are registered or recorded. Nominet has made a map of the world that has each country decided by the size on the number of websites that use their two-letter internet domain code.

So in the UK, for example, a lot of websites use .uk, and in Germany, a lot of people use .de. In India it is .in, and in Canada it's .ca.

In the US, however, most people use .com, so there are relatively few registrations under .us - its official country-code domain.

The US therefore appears very small compared to the UK. The UK is only the 21st largest country in the world by population.  But it is the 78th by physical size. But in terms of internet use it’s at the top of the table as one of the larger countries.

Maybe the most striking thing about the map, however, is the huge "island" to the east of Asia and Australia.

That is the tiny South Pacific island of Tokelau. Tokelau has a population of only 1,400. But there are 31 million registrations under Tokelau’s .tk. This makes Tokelau the world’s largest country-code domain.

It seems that the popularity of .tk is because of an unusual way of doing things compared to other countries. In Tokelau, domains can be registered for free, and revenue comes from advertising.

According to some reports, one-sixth of Tokelau’s GDP comes from .tk domains.

The USA and Tokelau show there are exceptions at each end of the scale. But Nominet’s map of the online world does seem to indicate some similarity between the size of a country’s internet domain, the amount of internet adoption, and economic strength, said the chief executive of Nominet, in a blog post.

The chief executive said that sadly, the map shows that global difference between rich and poor offline can often be mirrored by a lack of economic opportunity in the online world.

The continent of Africa has more than one billion people.  But on the map it’s much, much smaller than it should be.

Try to guess the meaning of the words in bold and match them with their closest meaning from the choices in the right. Some of the answers are very close and have similar meaning. The meaning of these words is how they are used in the reading. Some of these words have different meanings in the dictionary depending on how they are used.

 The answers are below the table.

A=2, B=6, C=1, D=8, E=5, F=7, G=4, H=3

Some example sentences using the new words or phrases from the meaning of how they are used in the reading to help you understand better.

1. The two degrees from these two universities are relatively the same.

2. This dress looks beautiful, but in terms of wearing it to a job interview, it is not the best.

3. She looked strikingly beautiful on her wedding day.

4. Samsung’s revenue from the Galaxy 7 is much higher than last year.

5. He was an exceptional student, he was more than excellent in everything he did.

6. A red sky at night indicates that the weather will be good tomorrow.

7. People with open minds can adopt new ideas.

8. He mirrored the thinking of his father by following the same ideas.

    

    

Some questions using the new words/phrases. Try to use the words/phrases in your answer.

1. Why are there relatively few people using .com in the U.S.A. compared to .us?

2. In terms of your country, how big is it compared to the world in this story?

3. Do you find any other things that are striking about this map?

4. What do you think of Tokelau’s way of making a lot of its country’s revenue? What it be possible in your country or another place?

5. What countries are exceptionally large in Europe? Why?

6. What does the map indicate about poorer countries? Is there any indication on the map of North Korea?

7. What is going to make the adoption of the internet more in Africa?

8. Explain in your own words about the mirroring of offline and online.