Most Internet time now spent with social networks, games

Just in case you needed further confirmation that blogs, social networks, and games are overtaking everything else on the 'Net, Nielsen has released its latest statistics. They show that Americans now spend almost a quarter of their PC/laptop days and nights on social networking sites and blogs. That's a 43 percent jump from a year ago.

Social networking now has a 22.7 percent share of the PC pie, while online games get a 10.2 percent share (up 10 percent from last year).

Meanwhile, the jury is still out on e-mail—which now commands a paltry 8.3 percent of consumer time, a drop of 28 percent from June 2009.

But the media survey company notes that at the same time computer e-mail use is in decline, mobile users are ramping up the activity—e-mailing now consumes 41.6 percent of all US mobile Internet time.

"Despite the almost unlimited nature of what you can do on the Web, 40 percent of US online time is spent on just three activities—social networking, playing games and emailing," noted Nielsen research analyst Dave Martin, "leaving a whole lot of other sectors fighting for a declining share of the online pie."

Those "other sectors" include Portals (4.4 percent), Instant Messaging (4 percent), and search (3.5 percent).