Social-Network Traffic Surpasses Web-based Email’s in U.K.

October traffic to the top 25 social networks, such as Facebook, Bebo and MySpace, accounted for 5.17 percent of all U.K. internet visits, compared with 4.98 percent for the “Computers and Internet - Email Services” category, such as Hotmail, Yahoo Mail and Gmail, according to Hitwise, writes MarketingCharts (via ResearchRecap).

(See Hitwise’s chart of social-network and web-based email traffic for the past year.)

That marks the first time that U.K. internet visits to social networks outnumber visits to web-based email services, Hitwise U.K. Research Director Robin Goad writes.

“A growing proportion of the U.K. online population is choosing to communicate with friends via social networks rather than email,” he adds.

Moreover, social networks now send as much traffic to retail websites as do web email sites, according to Hitwise data (see chart of the past year’s traffic to retail sites from the two categories).

Younger internet users - those age 18 to 34 - tend to visit social-network sites more than they do web email sites, whereas the reverse is true for those 35+, Goad writes.