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Social networking overtakes email
Social networking is now the most popular web activity, surpassing even email, according to a new study issued by information and media firm Nielsen. Active reach in what Nielsen defines as "member communities" now exceeds email participation by 67 percent to 65 percent, the firm reports--among all Internet users worldwide, two thirds visited a social networking site in 2008. Facebook now leads the pack: Three out of every 10 web users visit the site at least once a month, and in all, Facebook experienced a 168 percent increase in users in 2008, galvanized by growth among the 35-to-49 demographic.
Mobile social networking is most popular in the U.K., where 23 percent of mobile web users (about 2 million subscribers) now visit social networks via handsets--the U.S. follows at 19 percent, or 10.6 million subscribers. Mobile social networking usage increased 249 percent in the U.K. in 2008, and grew 156 percent in the U.S. Nielsen notes that the most popular social networks via PCs and laptops mirror the most popular services on the mobile web--Facebook is the most popular in five of the six countries where Nielsen measures mobile activity, with Xing proving most popular in Germany. In addition to the mobile web and dedicated mobile social networking applications, users are also interacting with their social networks via SMS--according to Nielsen, at the end of 2008 almost 3 million U.S. users were texting Facebook on a regular basis.
For more on social networking's growth:
- read this Nielsen report
Related articles:
Social networking tops mobile search queries
Facebook in mobile social networking talks with Nokia
Comments
Posted by Annalise | March 10, 2009 - 2:58pm
Social networking is more popular than email because it offers a wider variety of social networking activities.
Posted by Anonymous | March 10, 2009 - 10:19pm
There is something suspect or incomplete about the stat. For one thing, you have to give an email to access these online communities, which in itself would indicate that the number of email users either equals or exceeds the number of online communitiy participants. But the stat is obviously wrong, even aside from that. If that is really what Nielsen's data shows, then Nielsen has bad data.
Posted by Anonymous | March 10, 2009 - 11:17pm
Social networking sites have become an online portal, you can do many things besides sharing pics and interests. Facebook already have internal IM application as well as an email.
Posted by Manny Ju | March 16, 2009 - 3:22pm
In my opinion, we'll start to see that social sites and email each take on specialized and highly complimentary roles. Case in point: radio at one time was *the* source for information and entertainment. Serials such as The Lone Ranger, The Shadow, The Jack Benny Show all started off on radio. Radio still exists today but it's role in our society has changed.
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