Social Media Overtakes email

Email is just so last year – this year, we’re all too busy checking the social networks. At least that’s what the latest Nielsen survey of users’ habits has found. And the gap between the two is growing rapidly. According to the latest figures, one in every six minutes of the average web user’s online time is spent at a ‘social’ site, notably Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and the major blogging networks. And in terms of overall use, 65.1 per cent of people email, while 66.8 per cent of us use the networks, headed up (inevitably) by Facebook.

And with the rate of take-up four times stronger than any other sector, email is unlikely to be playing catch up for some time yet.

So does it mean the death of email? Probably not – we’re just finding new ways of communicating with friends and relatives, with email simply being left behind by the flexibility and interactivity of the social networks, not to mention the ‘immediacy’ that those networks offer. Having some seriously good social networking apps on mobile phones isn’t doing email any favours either – according to Nielsen, Britons looking at a social site via their phone was up 249 per cent. And that’s before the Twitter boom of the last few months.

So spare a thought for email and do it a favour tonight by firing one out. It’s served you well over the years…don’t desert it now.