The changing face of the web is becoming more apparent as Google’s mail service finally knocks Microsoft’s veteran Hotmail off the global top spot, and Pinterest shows more popularity than Tumblr in the US.
Hotmail, the Microsoft mail client, has been at the top for years, marking its 15th anniversary with 360m unique monthly users last year. But, today, Gmail has reached 425m monthly active users, making it the largest email service in the world.
That said, however, it’s worth noting that these figures are based on information from Google with no third-party validation, whereas ComScore still ranks Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail ahead of Gmail, with 325m, 298m and 289m users respectively.
But ComScore’s figures don’t account for access via smartphones or internet cafés – two very popular sources from which to access email – which may account for the discrepancy of figures.
Pinboards more popular than Tumblogs in US
Further to this email shift, we have a change a-coming in social media.
Pingdom reports that Pinterest, a relatively new player on the scene, is now getting more traffic than popular blogging site Tumblr.
The website monitoring service has judged this based on data from a number of sources measuring web traffic to the world’s biggest sites. Though Compete and Quantcast gave Tumblr better ranking, Pinterest came out on top with Alexa, Google Trends and Experian Hitwise.
ComScore’s most recent data had Tumblr just ahead of Pinterest for monthly unique users in March, but the site also clocked Pinterest’s year-on-year growth in May 2012 at 4,377pc against Tumblr’s 168pc. It’s likely that Pinterest has since surpassed Tumblr if this growth rate is anything to go by.
Email image via Shutterstock
