The internet is often vaunted as a productivity booster but it seems U.S. web users spend nearly a quarter of their online time on blogs and social networks such as Facebook.
A Nielsen study found that social networking takes up 23% of American’s online time, with Facebook accounting for 85% of that. The next biggest categories were games at 10% and email at 8%.
Web users are spending more time than ever on social networks – at the expense of other activities. This time a year ago, the same Nielsen study found social networking accounted for 16% of U.S. web users time, while email, then the second most popular online activity, took a 12% share. In total Americans spend more than a third of their online time (36%) communicating and networking across social networks, blogs, personal email and instant messaging.
Videos and movies was the other sector to experience significant growth – its share of activity grew from 3.5% to 3.9% over the past year, a 12% rise based on the raw numbers. In June 2010 the number of videos streamed passed the 10 billion mark.
It’s a different story in the mobile internet world, where email remains the dominant activity with a 42% share of online time, up from 37% a year ago. Portals are second at 12%, down from 14%, and social networking is third at 11%, up from 8%.
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With this data, I personally doubt if internet can still be considered as a productivity booster. This data seems to imply that most Americans are really fond of using the internet for leisure than use it as a productivity tool.
Comment by Hazel from UK Hostin — August 3, 2010 @ 4:20 am
The fact that Facebook accounts for 85% of the time that US guys and gals are spending on social networks demonstrates that Facebook is not only capable of beating other social networks (e.g. Myspace) but also beating other niche sites such as LinkedIn.
More details at:
http://idaconcpts.com/2009/12/31/linkedin-vs-face...
Comment by Facebook User — August 3, 2010 @ 8:32 pm
[...] its 500 millionth user, began competing head-to-head with Google for Web domination, accounted for 1 in every 4 pageviews in the US, and the story behind its success has already become the stuff of legend (Hollywood [...]
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