Web Apps in Canada

Read/Write web has a great post showing some of the Top Web Apps in Canada. Cool not just because it shows some great Canadian web companies like Mike McDerment’s Freshbooks, which I’d previously discovered via Rob Hyndman, but also for that nice preamble on Canadian Internet usage. Something that should be said more often:

Canadians use the Internet more than anyone in the world. According to comScore, Canadians spend on average 39.6 hours per month on the Internet, followed by Israel at 37.4 and South Korea at 34, while the USA is in 8th position with 29.4. Canada also leads in online reach with 70% of households having Internet access. The average pages viewed per visitor is 3800 in Canada, while the U.K. is second at 3300. And at 67%, Canada has one of the highest broadband penetrations in the world, 21 points higher than the US. Finally, while Canada still lags in online advertising, with $28.05 per Internet user and the US with $71.43, ad spending is expected to grow 32% this year (Ernst&Young LLP). So Canada is a sophisticated, and growing, market for Web apps.

As in any other country, Canadians heavily use Google, Yahoo and other global services like ebay and craiglist; each of which has their own english and french canadian localized versions. In social networking, Facebook is the star app of the moment. For instance, Toronto has more than 650.000 facebook users, more than the combined facebook users in New York, Boston and Los Angeles.

Kudos to Heri Rakotomalala of Montreal Tech Watch for the great guest spot on RWW.