The Daily Telegraph reports news from Nielsen today that Facebook and Twitter are now more popular than email. This is based on stats from December that show more people logged onto a social networking site than accessed an email server. The comparison is with Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo mail rather than the wider use of email services for the workplace, but it still underlines the immense popularity that networking and microblogging have achieved.
As Alex Burmaster of Nielsen says,
“This really is a seismic shift in how people are using the internet.”
As interesting are the demographics the study flags up – for example, 71 percent of British Twitter users are over 35, with more than 25 percent over 50. If you still find yourself saying that all this online prattle is just for teenagers it is time to think again. With Sky now integrating Twitter within its newsgathering and companies like Dell attributing significant revenues to its microblogging, any business needs to at least consider social media within their overall communications strategy.
