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- They access the internet using mobile devices frequently. For example, half of our interviewees use their phones, and the other half uses use a Kindle Fire to read information.
- They access the Internet using one or more devices. Three broad categories of devices are computers, smartphones, and tablets. The usage of computers to read information over the Web is common, but the use of smartphones is less so. These users are willing to pay additional money to gain the ability to consume data on the go: first, by buying a smartphone instead of a cheaper feature phone; and second, by purchasing a data plan from a carrier, which has wider coverage than Wi-Fi, but costs more for the same amount of data. The most enthusiastic users use unlimited data plans and resist carriers' attempts to move them over to limited plans. They may also buy data plans for tablets. These actions distinguish them from other smartphone users who might only be interested in email and business communication, and those who are happy to stick with Wi-Fi and not use the smartphone when a Wi-Fi network is not available. They make substantial effort to expand their ability to consume information.
- They are interested in staying up-to-date using information streams with more content than they are willing/able to read. These information streams include, but are not limited to, status updates (published to followers) on social websites like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+, social news with comments on aggregators (available to everyone) such as Reddit and Hacker News, RSS feeds, and targetted messages (only available to parties enumerated by the sender) like email and private messages on Facebook. A key idea is that they demand information from a large array of sources; someone who only uses the Internet for email would not derive much utiltity from our project.
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