Multitasking in the Social Space

The phenomenon of multitasking while online is well-documented. According to the USC Annenberg School Center for the Digital Future, more than 80% of US internet users multitasked during at least some of the time they spent online in 2009, and the number multitasking most of the time had risen slowly but steadily since 2007.

We’ve also reported on TV-web multitasking, an activity where men lead the way, and the fact that kids have effectively increased the length of their day by 3 hours through multitasking with various media.

Morpace’s “Omnibus Report” outlines how that multitasking plays out in the social networking space. With web users around the world spending about a third of their online time on Facebook, how do they manage to conduct their other internet activities?

According to the report, social networks typically do not take up a user’s full attention, at least not for the whole time they are visiting the sites. More than two-thirds of web users check email while they are on Facebook, for example.

About a quarter of web users said they shopped or researched products online while they were also using Facebook, but they showed an even greater propensity to search. It’s likely that users are spurred to look for more information about something their social network friends have mentioned and search engines are the first stop.

Some of those searches are probably brand- or product-related, even if users might not categorize the activity as “shopping” until they are further down the purchase funnel. Social network multitasking should also be a boon to marketers who are hoping to connect with users on sites like Facebook but ultimately drive them elsewhere, for example to ecommerce sites to make a purchase or to a sign-up page to join an email list.