Unlike age and gender data, online activity and friend counts do not have clear trends across email service providers. What the data seems to suggest is that Hotmail users tend to have slightly more social media profiles, and Gmail users tend to be slightly better connected overall.

Here are the results:

Social Media Profile Counts of AOL, Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo Email Users

Highlights

• 85% of users have two or fewer social media memberships
• On average, Hotmail users have slightly more social media profiles than AOL, Gmail, and Yahoo users

Online Friend Counts of AOL, Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo Email Users

Highlights

• On average, 66% of sampled users have less than 10 friends online
• Just over 7% of users have more than 150 friends online
• Gmail users average the most friends overall with 46.2; Yahoo users average the least with 40.0

Concluding Remarks

The vast majority of email users have two or fewer social media memberships and less than 50 friends online. Gmail users tend to be slightly better connected while Hotmail users generally have more social media memberships. Marketers interested in word-of-mouth advertising on social media should focus their efforts on the 7% of users with more than 150 friends to engage influencers.

The next part of this study will look at social network memberships.

Interested in analyzing your customer email list?

We’d be happy to help – to find out what we can tell you about your audience, contact us at info@rapleaf.com.

Related posts:

1. Social Insight Into AOL, Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo Email Users – Part 1: Age and Gender
2. Social Insight Into AOL, Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo Email Users – Part 3: Social Network memberships
3. Rapleaf Study: Popularity and fan demographics of Michael Jackson, The Beatles, Elvis, and Madonna across social media