As a country, perhaps even as a planet we have become increasingly obsessed with social networks and while more than 845 million people may be using Facebook, 140 million are on Twitter and Google+ is about to reach 100 million users that hasn’t stopped email from being the number one source of internet communications.

Research firm Ipsos recently polled 19,216 adults in 24 countries and they found that 85% of those polled said internet email was an important part of their communication structure while just 62% admitted to using social networks.

Of course how people actually use the internet greatly differs from one country to the next. For example in Hungary 94% of internet users choose to log into their accounts just to check email while just 46% of Suadi Arabians choose email as their main reason for logging onto the web. 

In Indonesia on the other hand 83% of internet users choose to partake in social networking, while 76% of internet users in Argentina and 75% in Russia also choose social networking as their main form of internet communication.

In the meantime the United States actually lags behind those countries with a 61% average for the number of users who log into social media when they sign online.

Gaining importance in the world of communications is also Voice-Over-IP (VOIP) with services such as Skype helping 14% of the world’s population connect to one another when internet connectivity is available. The highest use for VOIP is in Russia where 36% of people use the software, that’s compared to just 6% VOIP saturation in the United States. VOIP service is available for businesses as well such as those offered by Megapath.

With numbers like these it should come as no surprise that the likes of Facebook and Google have attempted to reinvent the way email platforms operate in order to grab new users who would prefer to send an email rather than log online.