Ads by TechWords

See your link here
Receive the latest technology news and information.
Networking
Computerworld Daily News (First Look and Wrap-Up)
Computerworld Blogs Newsletter
The Weekly Top 10
Cloud Computing
View all newsletters




Privacy Policy
 

Move over e-mail, social networks are taking over

Study: Social networks more popular than e-mail as middle agers flock to Facebook

March 10, 2009 12:00 PM ET

Computerworld - Move over e-mail. Social networks have just knocked you down a peg or two.

Used by two-thirds of all worldwide online users, social networks and blogs have become the fourth most popular online products, according to a report released yesterday by Nielsen Online (download PDF). The report lists e-mail as No. 5 on the list of users' favorite online tools. Search tools, portals and PC software topped the list.

"Social networking has become a fundamental part of the global online experience," said John Burbank, CEO of Nielsen Online, in a statement. "While two-thirds of the global online population already accesses member community sites, their vigorous adoption... show[s] no signs of slowing. Social networking will continue to alter not just the global online landscape, but the consumer experience at large."

Of the social networking sites out there, Twitter and Facebook seem to have the lion's share of the mind share these days. And Facebook has the lion's share of the market share, as well. In January, online researcher comScore Inc. reported that Facebook, once thought of as the up-and-coming social network, had overshadowed rival MySpace, with nearly 222 million unique visitors in December compared to 125 million for MySpace.

To back up comScore's numbers, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg noted in a January blog post that the social networking site had hit a big milestone -- 150 million active users, nearly half of whom use the network daily.

According to the Nielsen report, in all the markets that the company tracks, Facebook is visited monthly by three of every 10 people online.

The report also noted that for every 11 minutes that people spend online, one is devoted to a social networking site. And social networks aren't just for the teenage set anymore. Nielsen showed that the largest increase in users came from the 35-to-40-year-old age group.

"Social networking isn't just growing rapidly, it's evolving -- both in terms of a broader audience and compelling new functionality," said the Nielsen study's author, Alex Burmaster, in a statement.



Jump to comments

social network

Additional Resources

WHITE PAPER
Approximately 60 percent of data migration projects overrun time or budget, while some fail completely. Download this white paper, "Enhancing Your Chance for Successful Data Migration," to learn the critical steps you need to take to execute a data migration project with minimum cost and risk to your business.
WHITE PAPER
Read the Gartner research note to learn why the TCO of a server-based computing deployment used to deliver all applications to users is around 50% lower than that of an unmanaged desktop deployment.
WHITE PAPER
Economic downturns have a tendency to accelerate emerging technologies, boost the adoption of effective solutions, and punish solutions that are not cost competitive or that are out of synch with industry trends. This IDC White Paper presents the results of an IDC survey of 330 companies in Western Europe, Asia/Pacific and the Americas that measures the receptiveness to Linux and takes into consideration changing views driven by the disruptive economic environment that businesses face today.

What People Are Saying

White Papers & Webcasts

Virtualization and Web 2.0
In this era of Web 2.0, Web applications are absolutely mission critical to almost any organization. But these applications are giving IT managers...  

Key Strategies for Managing Data Growth
What are you storage challenges?

Data Manager Report Excerpt: File System Inventory
Cut storage costs and boost operational efficiencies.  

Reducing Storage Costs with F5 ARX
Save money- deploy ARX Solutions.  

Southern Company
Download Now  

Disaster Recovery & Cost Savings Zone
Thousands of customers world-wide have turned to virtualization solutions from Riverbed as a way to reduce costs.