Email Usage Down and Social Networking up in 2010
by Bill Ives
The Nielsen Company provides research that indicates Americans spend a third their online time (36 percent) communicating and networking across social networks, blogs, personal email and instant messaging. However the channels of communications are shifting. The share of time for social networks use climbed to 22.7% in June 2010, up from 15.8% in June 2009. This is gain of 43%. At the same time the share of time for email dropped from 11.5% in June 2009 to 8.3% in June 2010. This is drop of 28%.
With mobile devices email still holds strong for now. In a Nielsen survey of mobile web users, there is a double-digit (28 percent) rise in the prevalence of social networking behavior, but the dominance of email activity on mobile devices continued with an increase from 37.4 percent to 41.6 percent of U.S. mobile Internet time.
I have spoken with a number of vendors in the enterprise 2.0 space who have seen similar trends within the enterprise as social tools are replacing email for certainly functions. I see this directly in groups I am connected with. The general feeling is that email will not go away but will be more limited to what it does well, such as personal exchanges between individuals
