Whither Webmail?

Trend watchers have noted a decline in email usage reflecting in part growth in the popularity of social networking sites such as Facebook. Citing research reported by ClickZ.asia and others, the digital measurement firm comScore.com said total minutes spend on web-based email, not including PC web applications such as Outlook, was down two percent in November 2010 from a year earlier, with time spent in the Asia-Pacific region showing even more dramatic decline, dropping 10 percent. The report said “As social networking has reached a critical mass…communicating via wall posts, messages, tweets, etc. has often replaced the need for regular emailing in some peoples’ digital lives. Time spent on social networking sites in November 2010 grew 44 percent worldwide to reach a total 272 billion minutes.” Noting the implications of this trend for online marketers, comScore said “It’s not that people are communicating less and that is why email usage is declining—they are actually communicating more but just through an increasing amount of channels.”

http://blog.comscore.com/