Email and instant messaging constitute 84% of all content shared across the internet. Of the email providers, Yahoo constituted 44% followed by MSN at 25%, and then GMail at19%. GMail came as a surprise to me.
Email constitutes 59% of all content shared across the internet
As for the much hyped social networking channels? In totality, these only constituted14% of all content shared across the internet, with Facebook being the proverbial giantat 11%, which is more or less on a par with Yahoo Messenger, the instant messagingservice. So Facebook has become a serious contender.But what about Twitter? Gasp.
Twitter constitutes a mere 0.70% of all content shared across the internet.
Another one that is so small, as to be almost insignificant, is LinkedIN, at 0.14% of allcontent shared. The report, known as Social Media Sharing Trends 2009, provides a lotmore detail, and is well worth a read. You can access itonline, or download a pdf
versionwhich I created for convenience.The take away, for me, is that it is always important to monitor the trends, before you goand throw the baby out with the bath water. Email remains the tool of choice. Twitter may well be an up and coming medium, but for now, it is probably best utilised to createhype and as a traffic generator, given how rapidly tweets are indexed by the major search engines.Whilst on the point of indexing, bear in mind that email and instant messaging falloutside the net, so to speak. They may constitute the largest media, as regards sharingacross the internet is concerned, but this sharing is driven by the end user. There isnot much of an active role for marketers to play. But if you look at the active mediums,which constitues the social networking mediums, then Facebook is by far the largest.So email remains as relevant today as it ever was.