WILFING THE WEB

13 April 2007

Some wilf a lot more than others....

The Internet lexicon has a new word to describe an online activity, according to a light article in Newsfactor.com, and it turns on the desperate phrase "Now what was I looking for?" usually uttered as a "wistful question of the gray-haired set!"

Newscom reports that in classic Internet fashion the phrase has been reduced to an acronym, turned into a verb, and given a new definition. In the United Kingdom, the act of wandering aimlessly through the Web's endless hyperlinks is now known as "wilfing" (What Was I Looking For!). And, according to a British market research firm, wilfing is becoming a national epidemic.

The article goes on to provide some serious figures, quoting a YouGov plc study of 2 412 adults across Britain which found that more than two-thirds of Internet surfers admit to at least an occasional wilf, and nearly 25 percent estimate that they wilf more than 30 percent of the time they're online. That's the equivalent of two full workdays every month.

The survey discovered that shopping sites are the biggest motivation for wilfing, followed closely by news and travel sites.

The YouGov survey in England highlighted another negative consequence of wilfing - the impact that aimless Web surfing can have on relationships. More than 33 percent of the British Web surfers surveyed said that they were criticised by their partners for wilfing. That figure is considerably higher than a 2005 Stanford University poll, in which just 6 percent reported that their relationship had suffered from Internet surfing habits.

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