I wonder what the data covers. Does it show only genuine browser traffic or also apps? Do apps that periodically phone home for updates, like mail apps, count towards the 'attention'? Is that why gmail is so massive?
I would also like to know this. I've gotten rid of my streaming services and social media (minus the fediverse), but I don't see how people spend more time on Facebook than on Netflix. I have wasted entire weekends binge watching TV.
Better yet, if you are having the gmail app installed, is the app checking in the background counted as activity? Might explain Facebook's share. Mark 'Zuccy the Zucc' Zuckerberg famously gets pinged every time a Facebook user's heart beats.
volunteered to do the paper forms for highschool signups at the start of the year last year. Nearly 100% of the kids had a Gmail address but the parents had around ~60% Gmail ~30% Hotmail and ~10% yahoo.
Also, Verizon's email service was provided by AOL up until a couple of years ago. Or at least the shambling husk that called itself AOL, whichever entity that ultimately may have been.
Unfortunately, I don't have the data close at hand, but Twitter is actually not used by that many people online. You'd be surprised given the huge amount of proliferation that Twitter screenshots get, but honestly, I think that might just be a psyop, or I'm just paranoid.
what cracks me up is I will often mention the importance of email and I get flak for it like being old and going away and that is not where people do stuff today and its going away or such. Looks to me like its the largest general thing up there. 25% of the named blocks and I would not be surprised if its a higher percentage of the unnamed ones.
more people use chatgpt than reddit? The famously massive, addictive website? Are you kidding me? I wonder, as a person that's never used AI beyond sometimes perusing the "AI answers" that results from a google search, am I a unicorn? How many other people have never used it?
honestly terrifying. offloading all your critical thinking to someone (anyone) else is how we get cults. When will the cult of chatgpt start? Probably already has, honestly.
You might be surprised to learn that nearly all sites collect this data by default. It's built into the standard analytics package of most hosted WordPress services, Cloudflare, Google, etc.
A simple JS script can collect your system and browser info, generalized location, exactly where your mouse is and for how long (which links you hovered over but didn't click, how you found menus and submenus, etc.), which search engine you used to get to the site, how long you stayed on each page, and so much more.
You need a browser extension to not provide this data, even on Firefox. I always recommend uBlock Origin and Privacy Badger. The two together generally do a good job of blocking most of these scripts.
I imagine a lot of people have a tab with whatever their mail service is open all the time, and it's not much of a stretch to assume that Gmail is the most popular one. I'd doubt people are actively looking at it all that time, though.
Gmail will also send keep-alive pings back to Google's servers regularly until your login times out, which if I recall correctly lasts one week.
42 replies
I wonder what the data covers. Does it show only genuine browser traffic or also apps? Do apps that periodically phone home for updates, like mail apps, count towards the 'attention'? Is that why gmail is so massive?
I would also like to know this. I've gotten rid of my streaming services and social media (minus the fediverse), but I don't see how people spend more time on Facebook than on Netflix. I have wasted entire weekends binge watching TV.
I think it also might be USA centric
If I open a tab for gmail and leave it for 24 hours, is that 24 hours worth of 'activity'?
Better yet, if you are having the gmail app installed, is the app checking in the background counted as activity? Might explain Facebook's share. Mark 'Zuccy the Zucc' Zuckerberg famously gets pinged every time a Facebook user's heart beats.
Is it just me or the lack of "adult entertainment" websites makes it look like this diagram is deeply incomplete?
[email protected]
Well then they'd be a massive block being "Genitals"
you'd be suprised
Now do it based on the company that owns the sites
Yahoo mail? Seriously?
volunteered to do the paper forms for highschool signups at the start of the year last year. Nearly 100% of the kids had a Gmail address but the parents had around ~60% Gmail ~30% Hotmail and ~10% yahoo.
AOL!?
Old people set their homepage and never looked back.
Also, Verizon's email service was provided by AOL up until a couple of years ago. Or at least the shambling husk that called itself AOL, whichever entity that ultimately may have been.
And never turn off the monitor
https://techxplore.com/news/2026-07-desktop-browsing-trends-gmail.html
Which links to: https://www.ssrn.com/abstract=6991638
Desktop browsing, u.s. residents.
as I expected, undisclosed USA centric study
The whole fediverse is somewhere down in the fog. Maybe someday it will BE the fog.
Twitter gets less attention than Yahoo Mail ?
Unfortunately, I don't have the data close at hand, but Twitter is actually not used by that many people online. You'd be surprised given the huge amount of proliferation that Twitter screenshots get, but honestly, I think that might just be a psyop, or I'm just paranoid.
It's definitely punching above its weight class, that's for sure.
what cracks me up is I will often mention the importance of email and I get flak for it like being old and going away and that is not where people do stuff today and its going away or such. Looks to me like its the largest general thing up there. 25% of the named blocks and I would not be surprised if its a higher percentage of the unnamed ones.
america only? sourcey?
I haven't taken time to track down the source, which is honestly why I'm sharing here instead of the dataisbeautiful community this time.
https://techxplore.com/news/2026-07-desktop-browsing-trends-gmail.html
Which links to: https://www.ssrn.com/abstract=6991638
@[email protected]
God's work
Are they not counting Tik Tok and instagram?
This is just website traffic. It probably wouldn't cover app only experiences like TikTok
I see Instagram in the third row from below, second square from the right.
TikTok, not sure.
more people use chatgpt than reddit? The famously massive, addictive website? Are you kidding me? I wonder, as a person that's never used AI beyond sometimes perusing the "AI answers" that results from a google search, am I a unicorn? How many other people have never used it?
I think there are people practically LIVING on these AIs.
honestly terrifying. offloading all your critical thinking to someone (anyone) else is how we get cults. When will the cult of chatgpt start? Probably already has, honestly.
What evil creepy browser extensions and cookies did they have to trick unsuspecting users into installing in order to collect this data?
You might be surprised to learn that nearly all sites collect this data by default. It's built into the standard analytics package of most hosted WordPress services, Cloudflare, Google, etc.
A simple JS script can collect your system and browser info, generalized location, exactly where your mouse is and for how long (which links you hovered over but didn't click, how you found menus and submenus, etc.), which search engine you used to get to the site, how long you stayed on each page, and so much more.
You need a browser extension to not provide this data, even on Firefox. I always recommend uBlock Origin and Privacy Badger. The two together generally do a good job of blocking most of these scripts.
Source: I'm a web developer
sad ass graph
Didn't expect gmail to be so high.
I imagine a lot of people have a tab with whatever their mail service is open all the time, and it's not much of a stretch to assume that Gmail is the most popular one. I'd doubt people are actively looking at it all that time, though.
Gmail will also send keep-alive pings back to Google's servers regularly until your login times out, which if I recall correctly lasts one week.
Thats poor metric then, I do have tabs open but that's sub 1% of my daily screentime.
Imagemagick would do that in a snap.
Where is wikipedia 😭
Big yikes
I think I see diaspora on there.... ... way up in the top right corner.