Brits deserting IM?

I saw these figures today and I was intrigued (and not becuase it was the first time that I have seen UK figures rather than US ones!), but they show that Brits spent 1 billion less minutes on Instant Messenger last year than the year before. But the figures for Facebook are on the up. Instant Messenger and Facebook are now neck and neck in the UK both with around 2.4 billion minutes of usage each for the year (to the end of April 2008).

The figures show that the number of minutes that Brits spend online is up 4%, but the amount of time that we spend communicating is down 10%. And the biggest winners? User generated content (47%), Search (13%) and Entertainment (8%). The amount of time spent in eCommerce has remained level.

So things are looking good for two categories - user generated content and member communities (including wikis and blogs).

In total, Brits spent 33.3 billion minutes online last year (to the end of April 2008).