Content Beats Email

From its inception, the Internet has been primarily used for email. That is, the #1 online activity was email. The Online Publishers Association just released its Internet Activity Index which shows that email has finally been surpassed by content consumption. Compared with 2003, people worldwide are spending 88% more time now on consuming audio, video and text-based content than they do on sending or receiving email.

The two most astonishing facts from the study were the overall rise in the amount of time spent online (almost triple in ’09!) and the rise of communities. Of course, early 2003 counts as the Dark Ages of the Internet since it was before the launch of either MySpace or Facebook