The number of internet users worldwide reached about 2.1 billion in 2011, almost half of them living in Asia, RIA Novosti reported citing the annual survey conducted by The Royal Pingdom.

About 44% of all internet users live in Asia, with China being the global leader with about 485 million of internet users. Only 36% of the world’s most populous country residents have Internet access.

Europe accounts for about 23 percent of all internet users, 13 percent are from North America and ten percent - from Latin America. Africa, Middle East and Australia account for six, three and one percent respectively.

About half of all people online are younger than 25.

The Web is made up by more than 555 million websites, with almost 300 million of them appearing last year.

There are a total of 3.15 billion of registered e-mail accounts, which is 1.5 times more than the total number of users. More than 70% of all e-mails are spam letters.

Facebook retains leadership among social networking sites with more than 800 million accounts, a quarter of which were created in 2011.