Report: Social media, the new time suck
The ‘What Americans Do Online’ study monitored the daily online habits of more than 200,000 US residents.
The report finds that American consumer spent 43% more time (June 2009 vs. June 2010) on social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Just how much time is spent in the social realm? More than one-third of American’s online time was spent communicating via socnet, IM, email, blogs or message boards.
“Despite the almost unlimited nature of what you can do on the web, 40% of US online time is spent on just three activities – social networking, playing games and emailing leaving a whole lot of other sectors fighting for a declining share of the online pie,” said Dave Martin, Nielsen analyst.
The increase in time spent ‘socializing’ online took time away from past time-sucks such as email (28% decline in time spent) and instant messaging (15% decline). At the same time, the amount of time spent with social gaming has also seen a sharp increase; Farmville, for example, takes up about one-tenth of all US online time.
Social media, which consumers are now using not just to communicate but to read the latest news and information, is also taking time away from big hubs such as Yahoo and AOL. In 2009 about 5% of America’s online time was spent in portals but in 2010 that percentage dropped to 4%.
