Facebook Still the King of All Social Media

Facebook might be losing some of its cool, but the decade-old site is still riding high as the king of the social media space.

According to new data from the Pew Research Center, Facebook is still "by far" the most popular social media site. In fact, if you don't have a Facebook account, you're actually in the minority at this point. Some 71 percent of Internet users are now on Facebook, including – for the first time ever – more than half (56 percent) of those ages 65 and older, the research firm said Friday.

But on a more concerning note for Zuckerberg and Co., Pew found that Facebook's overall growth has slowed in the past year. The site's membership rates have seen "little change" from 2013 while other platforms like Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and LinkedIn saw "significant" increases in usership. Facebook-owned Instagram, for instance, increased its overall user figure by nine percentage points between 2013 and 2014, posting "significant growth" in almost every demographic group.

But while Facebook isn't growing at the rate it once was, users continue to be very active on the site, Pew said. Seventy percent of Facebook users engage with the site every day, a significant increase from the 63 percent who did so in 2013. To put that in perspective, about half of Instagram users and 17 percent of Pinterest users engage with the services daily.

Interestingly, Twitter engagement has dropped. Some 36 percent visit the site daily, a 10 percentage point decrease from the 46 percent who did so in 2013. Other findings from the survey: 52 percent of online adults use multiple social networks, up from 42 percent in 2013. As can be expected, women dominate Pinterest; 42 percent of online women now use the platform, compared to 13 percent of men.

:story: PC Magazine