Monday, February 25, 2002		Article

ASIAN women were full of festive cheer on the Internet in December with a huge surge in the use of e-mail and electronic greeting cards, NetValue has declared in Singapore.

The proportion of Hong Kong women who used e-mail doubled between October and December to top the survey of four Asian markets, the Internet measurement firm said in a statement.

South Korea saw a 72.9 per cent jump in the number of female e-mail users over the same period, followed by Singapore at 58.9 per cent and Taiwan at 35 per cent.

Hong Kong women also topped their Asian neighbours with a 79.1 per cent rise in the number of women sending out e-greeting cards between November and December.

The proportion of South Korean women using e-cards rose by 64.9 per cent. Taiwan racked up a 56.4 per cent jump and Singapore trailed with 36.9 per cent increase.

"Towards the end of 2001, women were definitely interested in keeping touch with people over the Internet," Jack Loo, president of NetValue, said in a statement.

"The Internet became a global coffee house, more than ever, as a means of people talking to friends, family and even strangers about what was happening around them and how they were coping."

Korean women dominated the Internet chat and Internet Relay Chat scene among the four Asian markets with close to 55 per cent of all female Internet users heading to such sites.

But Singaporean women are fast catching up in chat rooms with a more than fourfold jump in the proportion of female users in the last quarter of 2001, NetValue said.

About one-fifth of all female Internet users in Hong Kong used online forums and message boards, while between 10 and 15 per cent of women in South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan used such sites.— Reuters