According to new research from The Nielsen Company, though Email has long been the king on home computers, it's shifting quickly to social networking and online gaming. Americans spend 36% of their online time communicating and networking across social networks, blogs, personal email and instant messaging, up from15.8% just a year ago (43% increase).
Top 10 Sectors by Share of U.S. Internet Time | |||||
Rank | Category | Share of Time June ‘10 | Share of Time June ‘09 | % Change in Share of Time | Minutes Per Hour |
1 | Social Networks | 22.7% | 15.8% | 43% | 13:36 |
2 | Online Games | 10.2% | 9.3% | 10% | 6:06 |
3 | 8.3% | 11.5% | -28% | 5:00 | |
4 | Portals | 4.4% | 5.5% | -19% | 2:36 |
5 | Instant Messaging | 4.0% | 4.7% | -15% | 2:24 |
6 | Videos/Movies | 3.9% | 3.5% | 12% | 2:18 |
7 | Search | 3.5% | 3.4% | 1% | 2:06 |
8 | Software Manufacturers | 3.3% | 3.3% | 0% | 2:00 |
9 | Multi-category Entertainment | 2.8% | 3.0% | -7% | 1:42 |
10 | Classifieds/Auctions | 2.7% | 2.7% | -2% | 1:36 |
| Other | 34.3% | 37.3% | -8% | 20:36 |
Source: Nielsen NetView, June 2010 (Other refers to 74 remaining online categories visited from PC/laptops) |
Nielsen analyst, Dave Martin, says "Despite the almost unlimited nature of what you can do on the web, 40% of U.S. online time is spent on just three activities: social networking, playing games and emailing, leaving a whole lot of other sectors fighting for a declining share of the online pie."
US Monthly Time Spent on Most Heavily Used Internet Sectors (millions of hours) | |
Category | Million Hours |
Social Networks | 906 |
Online Games | 407 |
329 | |
Portals | 176 |
Instant Messaging | 160 |
Videos/Movies** | 156 |
Search | 138 |
Software info | 131 |
Multi-category Entertainment | 111 |
Classifieds/Auctions | 107 |
Source:Nielsen NetView, June 2010 |
Additional findings from Nielsen NetView and Nielsen VideoCensus include these comments:
The way U.S. consumers spend their Internet time on their mobile phones paints a slightly different picture to that of Internet use from computers, according to comments from the Intelligence Report by the Online Publishers Association. In the Nielsen survey of mobile web users, there is a double-digit (28%) rise in the prevalence of social networking behavior, but the dominance of email activity on mobile devices continue with an increase from 37.4% to 41.6% of U.S. mobile Internet time.
With 10.5% of mobile Internet users time spent on social networks, they are only the third most popular destination, but they have narrowed the time gap separating social networks from portals by 5.1 percentage points since 2009.
Christina Warren of Mashable concludes that "... email is... still more versatile, but for users that have a heavily populated social graph, sometimes social networking services can offer a more convenient messaging experience."
For more information from Nielsen, please visit here.