# When is a year not a year?

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/1998/04/29/when-year-not-year/
- Published: 1998-04-29T23:00:00+01:00
- Author: Howard Lake

When it is an Internet year! If you find it difficult to keep up with Internet developments,
you are not alone. Internet workers have been talking of Internet years and comparing
them with dog years for some time, as a means of indicating how quickly the Internet
is developing and changing. The phraseology is not so daft as it might seem now,
with the release of the US government’s first report into the evolution of the Internet.

It took radio 38 years to gather 50 million users in the US and 13 years for TV 
to acquire the same number of viewers. The Internet took just four years to do so.
Internet usage is now doubling every 100 days, according to the US Department of
Commerce (will it be renamed Department of e-Commerce?).

One serious impact of this speed of development on charities is that the old idea
of having 5-year plans is most unlikely to allow an organisation the flixbility 
to cope with the opportunities and threats that the Internet offers.

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