Nielsen: Email use drops 28 percent in one year

In a surprising twist, recent data released by Nielsen finds that email use as a percentage of time spent on the web, dropped by 28 percent between June 2009 and June 2010. What replaced all of this email? Social networking use was up 43 percent for the same time period, while gaming was up 10 percent. What does it mean and can you extrapolate the data for business interaction?

It's hard to say. This appears to be what "Americans" do in their free time, as opposed to what they do at work. From a content management point of view, email is a huge burden. Corporations tend to produce tons of it, so if general email use were to drop by a quarter that would have a profound effect on email, content management and eDiscovery issues with that much less email to track, archive, delete, store and so forth.

What's interesting is that Nielsen has a chart where they break down the percentages of Internet use into an hour of time. In that case, email, takes 5 minutes, while social networking took up 13 minutes and 36 seconds. They indicate low usage for instant messaging and watching video, two things I know my teen and his friends do a lot (in addition to spending a lot of time on Facebook). I'm also surprised that more time isn't devoted to shopping since so many people shop on the Internet now.

Even if these numbers don't tell the whole story, they do indicate a changing pattern of Internet use. We are clearly shifting from email-driven communication to social networks. Even if this is about personal use, it usually doesn't take long for personal habits to spill over to work, especially with smartphones and the blurring lines of work and home life. 

If true, perhaps your email burden will begin to lessen in the near future, but then you'll have to worry about communication on social networks that are often beyond corporate controls. It's never easy.

For more information:
- see the Neilsen report, "What Americans Do Online"

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