American internet users are spending increasing amount of time on social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, while the amount of time spent on e-mail and traditional web portals have declined,according to a recent research report from Nielsen.
The result of the study says that web users, in June, devoted 23% of their online time to social networking sites, up from 16% a year ago. Online games ranked second, previously held by e-mail use, where people spend 10% of their time, powered by social games like Zynga’s Farmville.
Another major service to enjoy increase user time in June was streaming of videos and movies with 3.9%, up from 3.5% a year ago.
This is no major surprise as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube together enjoys close to one billion users, or roughly 20 percent of the world’s population.
Time spent on E-mail dropped from 12% to 8.3%, while online time spent on traditional portals like Yahoo! also fell from 5.5% to4.4% in the last one year.
“You can start your daily online experience on Facebook and perform many essential communications functions,” Nielsen analyst Dave Martin said. “In the past, you might have to log into Yahoo Mail and then log into MSN Messenger and then maybe check the Yahoo home page for new, breaking news.”
Another interesting detail the report showed was; twice as many users over the age of 50 are using social networks than users under age 18, indicating the social network audience is getting more matured.
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