Social Insight Into Email Users, Part 3: Social Networks

In this last study of our email analysis series, we looked at social network memberships of 120,000 AOL, Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo users to gauge where they spend time online.

We found that AOL and Gmail users tend to favor Facebook, while Hotmail and Yahoo users tend to use Facebook and MySpace equally. Twitter is the third-most popular social network, followed by LinkedIn.

Here are the results:

Social Network Memberships of AOL, Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo Email Users

Highlights

• Over 29% of AOL and Gmail’s user base have Facebook memberships, but only around 13% have MySpace memberships
• Around 20% of Hotmail and Yahoo users are on Facebook and MySpace
• On a percentage basis, Twitter and LinkedIn are more than twice as popular with Gmail users as they are with AOL, Hotmail, and Yahoo users

MySpace, Twitter, and LinkedIn vs. Facebook

The table below shows the popularity of MySpace, Twitter, and LinkedIn with these email users as a percentage of Facebook’s popularity. For example, the number of AOL users on MySpace is only 43% of the number of AOL users on Facebook.

Highlights

• Twitter is around 4-5x less popular than Facebook with AOL, Hotmail, and Yahoo users
• Hotmail and Yahoo users tend to have similar social network preferences

Concluding Remarks

Facebook is the most popular social network with AOL, Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo user base, although MySpace rivals Facebook’s popularity with Hotmail and Yahoo users. In general, Twitter’s adoption still pales in comparison with Facebook and MySpace, although it will be interesting to see how Twitter’s growth affects its popularity in the near future. LinkedIn’s popularity is lowest among these email users, which might be attributed to an increased likelihood that LinkedIn users register for membership with their business emails instead.

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