Youngsters use social networks to communicate

Last month saw the number of visits to social networks, such as Bebo, Facebook and MySpace, overtake the number of visits to webmail, including Yahoo, Gmail and Hotmail, says Hitwise.

Hitwise’s custom category of 25 of the top social networks attracted 5.17 percent of all U.K. online visits, while webmail accounted for 4.98 percent. The figures also show that social networks are driving as much traffic to third party sites as webmail.

Live Mail is currently the U.K.’s most popular webmail and Facebook the most popular social network. Age appears to dictate which channel is likely to be used. Hitwise found that older users were apt to use email while younger users prefer social networks.

“This confirms that social networks are starting to eat into the web-based email providers’ dominance of the internet messaging market,” said Hitwise in a recent announcement. “A growing proportion of the UK online population is choosing to communicate with friends via social networks rather than email.”

Tags: Hitwise, online communication, social networks, webmail