Email rated as most important online account

Which online account do you think might be most important to web users? I would have guessed online bank accounts, but it turns out I was wrong. I’m in good company. Google researcher Elie Bursztein had also assumed that people were most precious about their online bank access but his recent survey proved him wrong.

Bursztein surveyed about 1100 people and found 45 per cent rated email as their most important online account. Bank accounts came in second at 28 per cent, followed by social network accounts and accounts with online stores and gaming. The 18-24 year old demographic was the only one to buck the trend, with just 31 per cent rating email as most important.

Bursztein discovered a couple of reasons why email is so important. Firstly, it is necessary for resetting passwords on other websites. Secondly, it is difficult to replace. If you lose access to your online bank account, there are still ATMs and branches and if you can’t use social networks anymore, you lose contact with some friends. But if email access is lost, you lose all your correspondence and personal and work contacts.

How SilverDane sees it… it was a surprise to see email ranking higher than online bank accounts in importance but when you think about it, it really isn’t a surprise. So much of our communication is done via email and to lose it would be to lose a history of communications and your access to many people.