Last month in the UK, visits to email-related sites and services dropped, while traffic to social networks continued an ongoing increase. This resulted in the first-ever switch between the two, with social networks coming out on top.
Robin Goad’s graphs and data indicate that social networks are likely to stay dominant, too. “A growing proportion of the UK online population is choosing to communicate with friends via social networks rather than email,” he confirmed. “[S]ocial networks now also refer as much traffic to other websites as web-based email services.”
Yet the role of age in all of this remains somewhat unclear. Young users like social networks, and if they stick with them, email is sure to lose ground at an ever-increasing rate. But just as a certain car company hopes to hook youngsters with Scions, and then have them move on to Toyotas and Lexuses, email might still grab people as they grow older.
If it doesn’t, this trend could be significant to companies like Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft; although each of them has a strong presence in the search and email markets, their influence on social networking is negligible. Google is liable to come out on top regardless of what happens, but all three would suffer.
