Social networks overtake webmail

Hitwise Intelligence has done an interesting comparison between the use of social networking tools vs Webmail tools. Very interesting is also the use of social networking tools vs Windows Live Mail per age group. It makes it obvious that the older age groups spent more time on Web mail, but the absolute use of both webmail and social networking tools is higher for the younger age groups ...

... For the fist time last month, UK Internet visits to social networks overtook visits to web-based email services. As the chart below illustrates, our custom category of the top 25 social networks, which includes Facebook, Bebo and MySpace, accounted for 5.17% of all UK Internet visits, compared to 4.98% for Computers and Internet – Email Services, which includes Hotmail; Yahoo! Mail and Gmail, amongst others.

...  It’s interesting to see that age clearly plays a role, with younger Internet users preferring social networks, while older surfers choose email. The graph below illustrates the user-base of Windows Live Mail and Facebook, respectively the most popular web-based email service and social network in the UK.

Source: Social networks overtake webmail
Robin Goad
Date Published: Tue, 06 Nov 2007 23:00:00 GMT