Email Is More Popular Than Social Media [STUDY]

At http://mashable.com/2012/03/27/email-more-popular-social-media/

by Todd Wasserman

Social media may be getting all the buzz, but email is still a more popular mode of Internet communication, according to a new survey.

Private research firm Ipsos polled 19,216 adults in 24 countries last month and found 85% of them used the Internet for email while 62% used it for social networking. Keren Gottfried, research manager at Ipsos, says she expected email use to trump that of social media.

"If you think about it, the Internet was first used for sending letters online. It shouldn't be surprising that we're using a digital version of sending a letter," she says. "But the fact that a majority of people are using [the Internet] for social networking is a paradigm shift; there's no equivalent in the offline world."

How people use the Internet varies from country to country. In Hungary, 94% go online to use email while only 46% do so in Saudi Arabia. In Indonesia, 83% of people use the Internet for social networking (defined in the study as visiting social networking sites, forums or blogs.) Social media use is also high in Argentina (76%), Russia (75%) and South Africa (73%). It's low in Japan (35%) and Saudi Arabia (42%). The U.S. figure for social media use was right around the... ( more at http://mashable.com/2012/03/27/email-more-popular-social-media/ )