Vital stats social networks overtake webmail

by Robin Goad Media Week 13-Nov-07

UK Internet visits to social networks overtook visits to web-based e-mail services for the first time in October.

Combined visits to the top 25 social networks, including Facebook, Bebo
and MySpace, accounted for 5.17% of all UK internet visits, compared to
4.98% for the Hitwise e-mail services category, which includes Windows

Live Mail, Yahoo! Mail and Google Mail.

This confirms what many industry commentators have suspected: social
networks are eating into the web-based e-mail providers' dominance of
the internet messaging market.

A growing proportion of the UK online population is choosing to
communicate with friends via social networks, rather than e-mail.
One-thirteenth of all UK web traffic now comes from a social network,
slightly more than comes from webmail.

The amount of UK internet traffic online retailers receive from social
networks increased by 153% between December 2006 and September 2007,
with 3.1% of visits to Hitwise's Shopping and Classifieds category
coming from a social network. And it's not just retailers that are
benefiting. After Google UK, the second-largest referrer of traffic to
charity donation site JustGiving is Facebook, which accounts for one in
every 10 visits.

Despite this, social networks haven't overtaken e-mail services across
the board. Age plays a very significant role, with younger internet
users preferring social networks, while older surfers are sticking with
e-mail. For example, 62% of Facebook users are aged between 18 and 34,
while 55% of Hotmail users are aged 35 and above.

Social networking may no longer be "just for the kids", but it seems
that older internet users still have a way to go before they embrace it
with quite the same passion as their children and grandchildren.

Robin Goad, director of research, Hitwise UK.