Largest Global Study on Social Media: Facebook Still Dominates
(170,000 Respondents)
GlobalWebIndex released its ‘GWI Social: Q4 2013’ study last week. It is the largest and most detailed ongoing global study into the digital consumer, with the team behind it having interviewed 170,000 users in 32 countries, representing 89% of the global Internet population.
Key insights include:
- More than 80% of the global internet audience are members of Facebook, with about 50% being active users. Just 10% of internet users are not using any social networks.
- Between Q2 and Q4, the estimated number of active users on Instagram rose by nearly 25%; Pinterest and Google+ saw increases of 6% while Twitter climbed by 2%. In contrast, active user numbers for Facebook and YouTube experienced declines of 3%, with Myspace dropping by 12%.
- About 55% of Facebook’s active users are visiting the site more than once a day – the highest figure across the major networks. iOS users are the most frequent mobile visitors to the site, with nearly 60% logging on multiple times each day.
- The estimated audience size for WeChat grew by 379% between Q2 and Q4. Other social or messaging apps recording strong increases include Vine (+105%), SnapChat (+54%) and WhatsApp (+35%). Facebook remains the dominant app, though, being used by nearly 70% of the mobile internet audience.
- Over a third in China say that they use VPNs when accessing the internet, with 55% of this group saying that they do so in order to visit restricted sites such as Facebook and Twitter
