Half of time online spent reading content, study says

A study over four years by Neilsen/NetRatings found that most of people's time online is spent on reading news and entertainment content, according to a Reuters story. This is both good news for traditional magazines of this ilk, given that most of them have, or are now developing, robust online offerings. The study found that

• viewing content accounts for 47 percent of time spent online in 2007, up from 34 percent in 2003.
  
• web search accounted for 5 percent of time spent online in 2007 from 3 percent in 2003.
• time spent on commerce sites such as Amazon.com fell 5 percent and accounted for 15 percent of time spent in 2007.
• time spent on communications such as e-mail fell 28 percent to 33 percent of time spent online in 2007, down from 46 percent in 2003. (part of this is probably accounted for by traffic being diverted into instant messaging)