Study: Gmail Users Most Active on Social Networks, Maybe

Posted 11/19/2009 at 2:27pm | by Bart Salisbury

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RapLeaf, a self-proclaimed “leader in automated search for people information on the social web,” has released the second part of its three-part study about the demographic characteristics of webmail users. In this part they consider the social media profiles and friend counts of AOL, Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo users. What they find, unfortunately, doesn’t really reveal all that much about who does what, social networking-wise, based on their webmail ident.

It’s possible to conclude from the study that Gmail users have, on average, more online friends than other webmail users. And it’s possible to say that Hotmail users have more social media memberships then their online counterparts. But the differences are relatively slight; probably aren’t statistically significant; and quite likely within the realm of measurement error.

For example, Gmail users have an average of 46.2 friends. Yahoo users come in second with 40.0 friends. But the arithmetic average in this case is inflated by a small number of ‘friend-hogs’: those with 50 or more friends. The telling number here is that 66 percent of webmail users have 10 or fewer friends--a result fairly consistent across all webmail services. It’s really not wise to let outliers dictate what the average of anything is. (A median would have better served in this case.) Same holds for social media profiles--the differences aren’t all that great.

This is a bit of a disappointment. The dynamic of social networking is a hot topic. And, perhaps, RapLeaf has more insight to this then they’ve released. Whether differences in webmail users (including those who use multiple webmail services), exist, and what they are, could offer valuable insight to the way the Internet is shaping how people interact with each other. Those insights, unfortunately, are to be found here.

Image Credit: RapLeaf