Jon Gibs, VP, Media Analytics
In the past, we discussed ways that social media has transformed the internet, having been so bold to say that social networks fundamentally changed the way we consume online media. So, if social media and social networks are these all-powerful game changers, shouldn’t they eventually make a newsworthy impact on email, the internet’s original “killer app?”
We decided to churn some quick data to test our hypothesis that “Consumption of social media decreases email use.” First, we broke the online population into four groups. The first three are terciles of social media consumption in minutes. The fourth is a group that doesn’t use social media at all. We then looked at each segment’s time of web based email consumption over the course of a year. Finally, we subtracted the email consumption of those that do not use social media from those that do, basically to show a lift over possible external forces. Clearly, there are more robust approaches that could be taken (controlling for factors other than consumption for example) but for the sake of this simple experiment, we tried to keep it straightforward.
Here’s what we found:
At least from this small experiment our hypothesis was disproved, but interesting nonetheless. It actually appears that social media use makes people consume email more, not less, as we had originally assumed – particularly for the highest social media users. Intuitively this makes some sense. Social media sites like Facebook send messages to your inbox every time someone comments on your posting or something you’ve participated in, and depending on your settings, can send updates on almost every activity. Also, it’s perfectly logical that as people make connections though social media, they maintain those connections outside of the specific platform and may extend those connections to email, a phone conversation or even in-person meetings.
This modest kitchen sink experiment further stoked our curiosity; the next step is to take a more robust approach to develop correlations between platforms to understand if this relationship is different across specific demographics and behavioral groups – rather than by levels of consumption.
If you have other theories or questions, we’d love to see your comments or questions below. Of course, you can contact us by email or social media.
I think SM users are spending less time w/email, vs. less volume. Particularly with news for Friends/Family. Much easier to update everyone at once via FaceBook/Twitter, than send individual emails. Plus uploading photos/videos to SM is faster than sending these large files via email and is less likely to jam up people’s InBoxes or get bounced.
I have a theory that as businesses integrate social media into their marketing plans, their use of email as a contact to the consumer will diminish. Email may still be consumed as part of the social media notification process, but just as email eroded the use of postal direct mail I believe that social media will erode the use of email in contacting consumers.
Do heavy SN users were heavy online users to begin with and therefore, more likely to spend more time in SN as well as email, online video, browsing, etc? What is the cause and what is the effect?
[...] analyzing four distinct online population groups and their email consumption rates over a year, the research disproved their original hypothesis and instead found that “social media use makes people [...]
Jon… Nice work.
Shows the heavy users really don’t get out much…. huh?
I do agree with belinda in that the content of the email will probably be lighter and maybe more action oriented… lets meet here… do this etc… as they already know more details of a persons life…. but probably no way of determing that?
Hope all is well Jon.
Tom
I would be interested to know are Social Media users opt in to receive more emails and do they like consuming more emails or are they just being sent more emails.
[...] analyzing four distinct online population groups and their email consumption rates over a year, the research disproved their original hypothesis and instead found that “social media use makes people [...]
[...] media has a negative impact on how much we e-mail, they had no idea that the test would prove the exact opposite of what they hypothesized. Based on their findings, it’s evident that the more consumers use social media, the more they [...]
[...] Social Media = More Email? [...]
email will remain for more personal – almost confidential – messages. and also for formal letters.
the chat form is more appropriate for SM.
[...] Digg Facebook Google Yahoo! Buzz Twitter StumbleUpon Follow me on Twitter A new study by Nielsen into the consumption patterns of internet users of social media and email has [...]
[...] analyzing four distinct online population groups and their email consumption rates over a year, the research disproved their original hypothesis and instead found that “social media use makes people [...]
[...] Another reason why you should think integrated when talking about direct marketing and social media http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsen…; #rhg 12 minutes [...]
I have anecdotal evidence that when project staff use blogs and other social media to support project management, email usage by project staff goes down (http://www.ddmcd.com/project-management/).
PS: “Social Media” are plural.
How do you define “consumption”? Is it people actually opening the email alerts and reading them in email before linking back to the social platform (interesting finding), or is it just having an increased volume of alerts in the inbox to filter through (not so interesting!)
I’d say that it rather minimizes your need for short email notifications. The only thing that makes you use your inbox a lot is, the updates that come from SM sites like FB. Your primary email box is for important stuff and your secondary is for crappy updates(if you don’t know how to turn em of) that come in loads during one day- if you’re popular that is:D…
[...] More here Posted in social networks | Trackback | del.icio.us | Top Of Page [...]
Interesting but not rigorous enough. Why focus on “web based email consumption”? What about non-web email, like the corporate email that many people spend up to 40% of their workweek in, as we’ve found at Intel? And what about the internal mail channels of the SN themselves, like Twitter DM, LinkedIn and Facebook messaging (which may be duplicated by email alerts, or not)? Lastly, what is the sample size, and what is the measured paramete – minutes per day? Per workday?
It’s an important matter, so I urge you to delve deeper into it and share the detailed results with the world.
[...] Martin: Is Social Media Impacting How Much We Email? | Nielsen Wire – It actually appears that social media use makes people consume email more, not less, as we had originally assumed – particularly for the highest social media users. [...]
Thanks Nathan,
Agreed, the initial look at the data was simply a back-of-the-envelope approach. We intend to do a much more rigorous look to include application based email, IM, etc. The reason we focused on web based email use here was the online advertising implications – more time means more inventory.
We’re open to continuing this dialog as this is a really exciting area of development for the internet overall, and Nielsen specifically.
- Jon Gibs
I would just tend to assume that people with heavy social media usage are plainly power users who not only consume more emails, but also tweet more, or blog more..The correlation established here is not convincing enough..
[...] vimos en: NielsenWire Comparte [...]
[...] There has been a debate with regards to whether or not social media is the death of email or if the two live in a symbiotic relationship with one another. As an interesting piece to the puzzle, Nielsen Online published an article about one of their studies on how social media effects the usage of e-mail. [...]
Is Social Media Impacting How Much We Email? | Nielsen Wire…
“So, if social media and social networks are these all-powerful game changers, shouldn’t they eventually make a newsworthy impact on email, the internet’s original ‘killer app?’”…
[...] Is Social Media Impacting How Much We Email? | Nielsen Wire It actually appears that social media use makes people consume email more, not less, as we had originally assumed – particularly for the highest social media users. (tags: email socialmedia nielsen 2.0 cc digital facebook internet socialsquare) [...]
[...] at Nielsen believed the same thing and created a study to test this hypothesis. And their early findings show that the opposite is true:the more people [...]
I’m especially interested in the middle of the pack vs. the lower tier. On average across the year their usage seems to trend about the same, but there are wide variations during April, July, December, and then April again (although in the opposite direction). I agree with Nathan on the point of needing a definition for “consumption” – these results really tell us very little if we don’t have a firm grasp on what is meant by consumption for both email and SM. Could the author provide a little bit more info on how it was defined, albeit in a back-of-the-envelope kind of way?
Hi Jon, Glad to continue dialog – you have my email, drop me a line!
[...] have been pointing them out to me in various micro-blogging Web sites. The events are actually a single study released by Nielsen that states how "social-media junkies" use email, and rather heavily, to keep on top of [...]
[...] time people spend on social networks, the more time they will also spend on email, according to Nielsen. You’d think the latter but the more time people spend online, allowing push email [...]
[...] at Nielsen believed the same thing and created a study to test this hypothesis. And their early findings show that the opposite is true:the more people [...]
[...] last but not least, we spotted an important article on WebNewser through Twine from nielsenwire on social media’s impact on e-mail usage. Nielsen Study: Is Social Media Impacting How Much We [...]
[...] While watching a tutorial this morning the narrator told me “e-mail is dead.” And I thought to myself, really? As I look at all the clutter on my desk I am reminded about how computers were supposed to be the death of paper. The fact is, I spend a lot of time reading articles I receive through my e-mail. I find email terribly simple and convenient. I do the majority of my correspondence with my clients, the kids’ teachers, coaches and the ex-husband via e-mail. All of my clients have e-mail campaigns in place with high ROI. I know the big prediction for the last several years has been, “social media would be the death of e-mail.” So I did an online search regarding the subject this afternoon and ran into a timely blog post by Jon Gibs, VP of Media Analytics at Nielsen titled “Is Social Media Impacting How Much We Email?” [...]
[...] the correct answer is “No.” In fact, a Nielsen study shows that active social media mavens use email more. It makes sense because Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter [...]
is the report/study of the Email Consumption Levels by Segment available for download?
[...] in a recent experiment conducted by Nielsen, “it actually appears that Social Media use makes people consume email more, not [...]
I have to agree with Nathan, and perhaps express even greater disappointment since I and many other professionals look to Nielsen for quality data and analysis — and this doesn’t pass the test.
The first thing I noticed from your graph was a lack of difference in time spent on email between the bottom two terciles — where it would appear that people who use social networks less actually spend more time with email. That could have just as easily been the headline here: That there is no difference, despite your attempts to prove it.
This is an important question, so it’s good that you will continue to examine it, Jon.
[...] Read: Nielsen’s Jon Gibs, VP, Media Analytics, on “Is Social Media Impacting How Much We E-mail?” [...]
[...] because they found another way to communicate but a recent informal study from The Nielsen Company found the opposite to be [...]
[...] How social media drives MORE not less email consumption [...]
[...] Is Social Media Impacting How Much We Email? [...]
[...] Nielsen didn’t do either. They took it on the chin, and said that the research didn’t back up their hypothesis, and publ… [...]
[...] is despite the fact that “social media use makes people consume more email, not less,” according to [...]
[...] of too quickly abandoning email. No less an authority than Nielsen, the user analytics company, says social media usage appears to actually increase email usage. Hitwise, another analytics and business intelligence firm, says Twitter’s usage may have hit [...]
[...] http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/is-social-media-impacting-how-much-we-email/ [...]
We find that social media is both a great advertising meadium and a way to have your customers say what the really want to about your company.
We run our company on e-mails and see no impact in the future for reduction of e-mail in any way
I think the “gear” must be considered in the discussion. Blackberries paved the way making email portable. Affordable internet phones with larger screens (iPhone, etc) make SM more readily available.
Mini-laptops help shift the focus from texting and Tweeting to web based visual/graphics communication.
I think the text, email, SM services will evolve into one big glob. They are already overlapping. Many offer features to upgrade your other SM and email sites with one click.
I think a more interesting, and probably more accurate, analysis of email vs. social media use can’t be counted in minutes spent on email, but percentage of time online spent on email. I think it makes sense that high-medium social media users would spend more time on their email, because they are high-volume web users. But the quality of their email use would certainly have decreased as they spread out their personal connections through various social media outlets. This in comparison to non-low social media users, whose time spent connecting to people online would definitely rely more on email.
I’d be interested to see a correlation between these and personal chat use as well.
[...] Is Social Media Impacting How Much We Email? par Jon Gibs, Nielsen [...]
[...] Email Several months after publishing its controversial study, Nielsen reported that the heaviest social media users actually use email more. Despite their initial hypothesis that social networking use would decrease the amount of time we [...]
[...] Is Social Media Impacting How Much We Email? – Nielsen Wire – Sep ‘09 [...]
For me, social media has almost entirely replaced usage of my personal (non-work) e-mail. However, for work, e-mail still remains the most-used method of communication. I would assume others are experiencing this same thing.
[...] the correct answer is “No.” In fact, a Nielsen study shows that active social media addicts use email more. It makes sense because just about every social [...]
[...] look at ways to use them together. There are already natural connections between the two. A recent Nielsen study found that the more people use social media, the more time they also spend with email. That’s [...]
In my experience, social networking apps do in some cases replace emails. I find that I Skype- or Facebook-chat a lot with my team, especially in one-on-one instances. While Gmail has this chat facility, Ms Outlook does not.
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