The Nielsen company’s latest study show that online games have edged out email as the 2nd-largest time sink online in the U.S.
Progress, I think.
(The result may be partially due to users shifting personal communication from email to social networks.)
*
| Top 10 Sectors by Share of U.S. Internet Time | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| RANK | Category | Share of Time
June 2010 |
Share of Time
June 2009 |
% Change in
Share of Time |
| 1 | Social Networks | 22.7% | 15.8% | 43% |
| 2 | Online Games | 10.2% | 9.3% | 10% |
| 3 | 8.3% | 11.5% | -28% | |
| 4 | Portals | 4.4% | 5.5% | -19% |
| 5 | Instant Messaging | 4.0% | 4.7% | -15% |
| 6 | Videos/Movies | 3.9% | 3.5% | 12% |
| 7 | Search | 3.5% | 3.4% | 1% |
| 8 | Software Manufacturers | 3.3% | 3.3% | 0% |
| 9 | Multi-category Entertainment | 2.8% | 3.0% | -7% |
| 10 | Classifieds/Auctions | 2.7% | 2.7% | -2% |
| Other | 34.3% | 37.3% | -8% | |
| Source: The Nielsen Company | ||||
Or maybe also some of their personal communication is in-game?
@Linn Good point, but I don’t think that games (apart from Animal Crossing) offer that great tools for asynchronous messaging?
Fair enough, but does it have to be asynchronous to replace email? Which was more my point, although not well enough articulated in that little sentence.
I just wonder, half jokingly yet half seriously, -how many use online gaming space for their personal communication? By using in-game chat to catch up with friends or the private message systems. I think it’s common for online gamers to take some time to catch up on communication in-game before playing, maybe using it as an emailing system, but being registered as time spent in online games, not e-mail. Perhaps a true sign that our activities online are pretty much the same, but our space is more defined, as in when we’re online we’re also in-game?
Just having fun spinning around with it. ;)
40% of the time people spend in social networks is in games.
http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/30/half-of-all-facebook-users-play-social-games-its-40-of-total-usage-time/
Richard
@Richard I wonder if the study I cited factored that in.
No, it didn’t.
Reason: if Nielsen did factor it in, then the 22.7% figure for social networks must be games-excluded, and therefore represent 60% of the games-included figure. This means that the games-included figure for social networks is 22.7/0.6, which is 37.833%. 40% of this must be for games, so that’s (227/6)*0.4, which is 15.133%. As the entire figure they give for games is less than this, they can’t have factored it in.
Well, they could if other social networks have different figures to Facebook and there are enough of them to change the figures…
Richard