Social Networking Now More Popular Than Email, Report Finds
Nielsen Online, an analytics firm that tracks time spent online at various websites, has issued a report finding that throughout 2008 social networking sites and blogs saw more time spent by users than personal email. While not shocking, the finding does mark an important point in the history of the web.
Youth watchers have long argued that for young people, email is how you communicate with elders in formal situations, while social networks and SMS are the preferred method of communication among peers. Nielsen found, however, that Facebook in particular saw greater growth among older people than it did among the young.
This shift has primarily been driven by Facebook, whose greatest growth has come from people aged 35-49 years (+24.1 million). From December 2007 through December 2008, Facebook added almost twice as many 50-64 year old visitors (+13.6 million) than it had under-18 year old visitors (+7.3 million).
Our take away from these findings? People prefer the clean, controlled, multimedia and publicly social experience of social networking communication over the relatively open, individualistic and spammy medium of email. The fact that there is effectively no data portability allowing communication archives to be ported from one social network to another as there is with email doesn't appear to be bothering people in the short term. We wonder if it will in the long term.
For a more in-depth look at this phenomenon, check out Danah Boyd's latest analysis titled "Social Media is Here to Stay - Now What?."
Share
Facebook
Comments
Subscribe to comments for this post OR Subscribe to comments for all ReadWriteWeb posts
Not at all surprising and completely in line with the growing trend to "live social". That said, this might be the biggest inflection point in the social media "evolution" trajectory since porn became less popular than social media (among younger users) in late 2007.
I think the key point of contention will be ownership of content on social networking sites going forward.
The term ‘user-created content’ could increasingly come to mean 'user-owned content'.
Interesting times...
The big question is how one can make money using email's replacement or "poor man's email" system...
Wooo! Two legs better!
Posted by: Daniel J. Pritchett
|
March 9, 2009 10:51 AM
No.Shit.
Posted by: Mohomed Abdullahi
|
March 9, 2009 10:54 AM
>" People prefer the .... publicly social experience of social networking communication ". Which could also be read as 'stalking' and requires more time ofcourse.
Posted by: Siddharth Mitra
|
March 9, 2009 11:05 AM
Of course it's more popular, it's more dynamic. It's also less time consuming. You look at five pics, comment done.
Posted by: Richard Azia
|
March 9, 2009 11:11 AM
warzabidul if you read the post you'd see that it's actually all about time spent on site
Posted by: Marshall Kirkpatrick
|
March 9, 2009 11:12 AM
Now I've read the post and I agree with it. Talking via short bursts is more natural. It resembles how we talk to each other in social settings as much as online.
Posted by: Richard Azia
|
March 9, 2009 11:15 AM
Considering how frequently I access Twitter and Facebook on my webtop, I'm not surprised! I have several conversations going with colleagues, friends, and clients on both of these sites. It easily incorporates other applications and additional users, which is ideal when I'm out and getting work done. It's also nice because it's one less application that I need to open and weed through.
It is easier to contact someone you don't already know via Twitter and then switch to email and/or chat for more extensive communications or FriendFeed for group discussions.
There is one thing about Twitter that is both an upside and a downside; you don't have to slog through and delete @ messages. My email is STILL overflowing and manually deleting messages is time-consuming and boring.
Thanks for reporting the data. Very useful.
I agree, it certainly takes more time to communicate on FB. And the growth over last Christmas-- yes indeed, it is old city out there, more every day.
I think there are a couple things going for it, neither of which are attractive to me-- explicit whitelist email, meaning no spam just friends, and exhibitionist messaging, everyone trying to make funny comments and status updates. It is definitely novel, but I don't care for it.
Time on site might be good for FB, but for users, I have a hard time believing they're getting much productive done.
The growth is definitely there, but I'm still not convinced that the engagement is growing 'per user'. There are 250 million 'users' on Facebook. Those numbers overwhelm the actual number of engaged users to a point that I believe it skews the statistics.
What are they 'doing' on social networks is the next question. What is their intent? Businesses are flocking to social network advertising and not seeing any results, because the intent nor the attention span is there for advertising.
Blogging is a huge portion of this study, but the stats are overshadowed with the much shinier 'Facebook' stats. The big news here is that, despite all the naysayers, blogging is still the fastest growing and most effective means of communication on the web. Google is still King and we must feed the King... with content.
I don't necessarily see this as an either-or scenario. They serve different functions. Email may end up being more "formal" with longer messages, but it will maintain its place, just as the phone has.
Users of SMS (especially the young) are creating a new way of communicating for themselves. It's disruptive, but not destructive of "old" ways of communicating.
Cheese more popular than strawberries.
It is probably true that, compared to youngsters, the elders are reading more emails than communicating via social sites and sms.
We love what is visually enticing that's why SN is popular to a teen like me.
Thank you for the work you have put into this post, it helps clear up some questions I had about Facebook. I will bookmark your blog because your posts are very informative. We appreciate your posts and look forward to coming back.
I am fairly new to blogging and really appreciate your content. The article has really peaks my interest. I am going to bookmark your site and keep checking your content out.
chk my posting too on this article
http://www.oceanofweb.com/internet/social-networking-more-popular-than-email.html
Yes nowadays people are more prone to social neterking rather than emails
Considering the growth of Twitter, social media is definitely taking off as a method to communicate to your end users. I still feel that Email could be effective depending on the age group and how you segment it.
I don't necessarily see this as an either-or scenario. They serve different functions. Email may end up being more "formal" with longer messages, but it will maintain its place, just as the phone has.
Hi!
I am agree with you.
Social networking is fastest growth source because it provides more than other thing
Yes nowadays people are more prone to social neterking rather than emails
thans true
This is a great article. It raises a couple questions in my mind:
1) Growth among older demographics (>35) is significantly higher than younger demographics (
2) As we're nearing the end of 2009, has anyone heard of any other reports that have 2009 figures?
I'm interested because our website targets users right around the 35 year age and I want to know who really our social media marketing efforts are talking to...
Arg - my first question got cut off:
1) Growth among older demographics (older than 35) is significantly higher than younger demographics (younger than 35). Is the total number of users (not growth) similar? That is to say, are the total number of users over 35 larger than the total number of users under 35?
I agree that Facebook is growing rapidly and I see many people abandoning their MySpace pages for Facebook. I see this trend especially with the over 25 group. It will take more time for the over 50 group to come on board, in my opinion.
I think the younger users are staying with MySpace while the more mature audience is moving to Facebook. I wonder who will be next?