Although it was recently reported that Facebook users are increasingly deactivating their accounts, social media websites continue to be among the most visited today. People still spend hours updating their online social statuses, interacting with friends and family, as well as simply browsing through their contacts’ recent posts. A recent research has discovered some curious facts and tendencies when it comes to social media trends.
The study was conducted by GlobalWebIndex and it focused only on the latest social media trends from 2013. What it found is that social media users prefer more visual content. In addition, older users are getting more open to these modern technologies.
According to the research, Facebook continues to be the most popular social network. This may not be really surprising. However, the interesting part here is that its leading position may be soon challenged by Google+. The study has found that Google’s social network is breathing in Facebook’s neck. Its market share has reached 50% of all social media users today.
Despite Google+ confident performance, it is Pinterest that managed to register the biggest growth over the last few months. For a period of just one year the visual website scored growth rates of nearly 90%.
This, however, may not be really surprising. The study has discovered that social media users are showing more and more interest in visual content. They are no longer satisfied with pure text. As a result, one of their main activities on social networks is uploading or sharing pictures. That is especially the case with desktop and smartphone users.
Even though social media websites are still largely regarded as a teenage-dominated field, the number of older users has greatly jumped over the past one year. The share of users aged between 55 and 64 has increased with the amazing 100% over the last twelve months. Older users are particularly attracted by LinkedIn.
The region that has the highest number of social media users is the Asia Pacific. Interestingly, this region is characterized by the fact that it has a quite low web penetration. However, the Asia Pacific is one of the most overpopulated regions and this balances the odds. In contrast, the Middle East has the lowest amount of online social users today.
The study concludes that the number of mobile social media users will soon reach that of desktop users.
