The Farmville Effect

Link to August 1 San Jose Mercury News article, "Internet users spending more time on social networks".

Excerpt:   "Time suck" is a phrase often used to describe online social networks like Facebook and online games like "FarmVille." Now new research quantifies the phenomenon, showing that nearly one-third of the time Americans spend online is devoted to such activities, while time spent on conventional e-mail and portals such as Yahoo has declined.

The report by Nielsen Online, titled "What Americans Do Online" and released late Sunday, describes changing Internet use during a period of intensifying competition in an industry centered in Silicon Valley.

While Google's leading search technology has proved a powerful advertising vehicle and Yahoo leads in banner ads, Facebook's dominance in the growing social networking sector is recognized as a major competitive threat to both of those companies.

Strikingly, Nielsen's research also showed that Americans now spend more time playing games than handling e-mail — in part because tens of millions are staying in touch on Facebook rather than communicating on services such as Yahoo Mail or Google's Gmail.


See also "Facebook, Farmville Now Wasting a Third of Your Web Times at All Things Digital.