Are Social Networking Sites Reducing Email’s Usage?
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Just the other day I was talking with my good friend Andre’ Smith and we were discussing how many of our friends have now jumped on the social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. People that once had no interests in online activities just a few short years ago have been bitten by the social networking bug. Man, how times have changed.
Next thing you know they’ll be telling us how the discovered the internet 
After the conversation, I began to wonder about the impact of social networking sites on the use of email. People who once spent all of their time using email now spend lots of time using Facebook and other community sites.
So are they using email less or staying online more?
When asked, most are unable to quantify this or simply have no idea.
Email was once the main social networking tool online. This is how most of our information was circulated. Many emails would quickly go viral, depending on the content and served as the conversations of the day.
Today, social networking has surpassed email in popularity and for good reason. The responses are often instant and let’s face it, there is a lot more to keep your interest using social networking sites. Email shall remain a powerful tool but for many, it has become more just another tool.
With all of the interaction on the social networking sites, one may think that a reduction in the number of emails required to communicate would have occurred. This would represent a shift in the message delivery system, but has this really occurred?
I honestly cannot tell if I am using less email today than years ago. The data needed to answer this or to conduct a survey is difficult to recover at this point, some of which has been deleted anyway. So I’m left to go on my internal feelings, which seem to indicate that I am actually using just as much or more email today than in the past.
For one thing, I have more accounts now than yesteryear and each gets it’s fair share of new mail daily. A look at any inbox indicates that things have not really slowed at all. But that’s my personal view, what about the larger view?
In researching the answer I came upon an Online Publisher’s Association Press Release that indicates that consumers are spending more time online with content sites than with social networking and communication sites.
This supports the decline in email usage, since people are able to communicate on the social networks more efficiently, as the report points out.
Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn, according to the Press Release, have had a significant impact on the communications category, which saw a 41% decline.
So what impact has social networking had on your email usage?
Do you feel you are using less, more or about the same?
If you’d like to read the full OPA Press Release, you can find it here.
7 Comments
October 16th, 2009 at 4:24 pm
‘Nice article Jimi: I think that email usage has definitely increased, due to one main factor: Spam. Reports state that, despite the efforts of whatever agency, legal or otherwise, spam accfounts for a huge percentage of internet traffic, and a large percentage of that huge percentage must, by the law of averages, be email.
- Not that everybody who sends spam is actually a spammer: There are many types of worm that will do it for you. (From personal experience, I accidentally activated a nasty one that was hiding in a music file that I downloaded years ago, and suddenly found that my computer was sending spam to my contacts list plus sending random spam to random email addresses. – Don’t worry: It’s been dealt with; though it took 4 days and many scans with various programs to completely kill the infection… ‘Long story.)
- So statistically, if spam is included in the equation, email must definitely be on the up. As for normal emails; I think that people use them as much as before – as well as Social Networking sites too.
P.S.: Twitter rocks
October 16th, 2009 at 8:41 pm
I use email a lot less these days Jimi. Between @replies and DM’ing I find it much easier to communicate quickly and easily through twitter. Not much of a FB guy; a little too slow for me. Logging in to and checking my gmail, hotmail, and yahoo accounts is time-consuming. I check it 1-2 times a day. Anybody who I meet on twitter I tell them to reach me with a DM.
October 16th, 2009 at 8:56 pm
Hey Sharron, thanks for your comment.
Email does not seem to have lessened for me, but I’m doing a little more than the average online user. Spam email I’d treat like spam comments, as they are trapped and thrown away. You do raise a good point however as spam must be counted in the overall email traffic count.
It will be interesting to see where this trend heads over the next year or two.
October 16th, 2009 at 11:08 pm
I think email will always be a necessity. There are thing that can only be addressed by email like personal missives. In term of privacy, email will always be preferred.
October 17th, 2009 at 5:57 am
I agree, Walter
email will always be around, but a lot of what you could only do using email can now be done using social networking features like direct messaging and chats.
Good to see you, thanks for coming by.
October 17th, 2009 at 6:48 am
@Ryan
How goes Ryan? Thanks for your comment.
The DM feature of Twitter is a convenience for short messages.
Facebook has a chat and also a messaging feature that are both really good. Been on Facebook lately? May want to take another peek.
See you around, guy.
October 18th, 2009 at 12:43 pm
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