Facebook still leading in social media
Recently, a large number of businesses have been trying to incorporate social media in their marketing mix. Although there are several choices of social media services, Facebook is maintaining its dominant position, according to eMarketer.
In February 2012, Canada recorded the historical social media penetration rate of 49.3%. This penetration rate is only 0.6% lower than the United States, which has the highest penetration in the world.
Out of many social media services such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Google+, Facebook is by far the most popular social media. The total number of Canadian Facebook users is expected to grow to 17.1 million by 2014, and it gained more than 20 million unique visitors in October 2011!
Other social media services are lagging behind. Twitter gained only 4.9 million unique visitors during the same period, and Tumblr gained only 2.5 million. LinkedIn is quickly becoming popular, and it attracted about 5 million unique visitors in February 2012 (70% increase from a year earlier).
Still, it takes time for competitors to challenge the current position of Facebook. The average time spent by visitors is 473 minutes on Facebook, while Twitter could only retain users for 19.9 minutes. More time users spend on a social media website means they will watch more advertisements, and create increased revenue opportunities for service providers.
Out of many social media websites, however, Google is probably facing the most significant challenge.
Google’s social media service, called “Google+” is supposed to challenge the dominance of Facebook. Instead, average usage of this service has been declining over past few months. In November 2011, average user spent 5.1 minutes on Google+, which was about 1/100 of Facebook users. By January 2012, the average usage time declined to shocking 3.3 minutes.
Creating a popular social media service is challenging even for Internet giants such as Google. To attract a large number of users and make them stay longer, service providers need to provide innovative services for Internet users.
http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1008932&ecid=a6506033675d47f881651943c21c5ed4
http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1008933&ecid=a6506033675d47f881651943c21c5ed4