Popular wisdom has it that during a recession people will cut back on all sorts of expenses, but they will still go out to the movies. The story goes that, supposedly, people need to relax and that movies provide a great temporary escape from reality. As I’ve always heard it, movie theater revenues actually go up during a recession.
Now, I don’t know for certain if the movie theater story is true. But current trends would seem to suggest that it is, according to articles like this one. Movie-going aside, I’ve seen multiple sources that would suggest a similar role for recessions in influencing Internet traffic. For instance, this article discusses a recent Telegeography study showing significant increases in international Internet traffic. The study focuses on just a subset of the infrastructure, so it is by no means definitive. But other sources (including private data) back up this view of Internet growth.
The question remaining, in my mind, is whether the increased growth is due to changes in the underlying network connectivity, business consolidation and/or outsourcing, consumer use (i.e. the “Recession Movie-going effect”), or something else entirely. If anybody has data to suggest one conclusion over another, please post a comment or send me a note with a pointer. I’d love to understand this better.
