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By Graham Hayday, 17 July 2001 16:18

NEWS Demand for the wonderful world wide web is showing no signs of abating. The internet has attracted the tentative clicks of a virgin UK surfer every six seconds so far this year. The first half of 2001 has seen 2.7 million new home internet users in the UK, which compares with three million new users throughout the whole of 2000. There are now 13.9 million people online at home in the UK, accounting for 37.6 per cent of households, according to research from net monitoring company NetValue. Furthermore, of the people who went online for the first time this year, 55.6 per cent were women. Women now account for 42.4 per cent of all web users. Net novices are also younger these days - 16.3 per cent of users newly online in 2001 were aged 14 or under. This age group makes up just 7.3 per cent of all home net users. Other interesting bits and pieces revealed by the survey include: * The Big Brother site entered top 25 most visited websites - 1.3 million unique users have visited the site so far this year * Largely as a result of this, the number of visitors to channel4.com almost doubled (up from 683,000 unique visitors in May to 1,250,000 unique visitors in June) * New internet users spend longer online, their average session lasting 25.3 minutes compared with 18.8 minutes for all web users * Online chat was the highest growing sector in the period, growing by 123.1 per cent, and, unsurprisingly, is most popular among youngsters. * Just over 51 per cent of chat room visitors in June were aged 24 and under, and 31.7 per cent were students (proving that they really don't have enough work to do).