Facebook has become a staple of our everyday lives, and even of our businesses. We have become quite dependent on it as a marketing tool and a path of communication to our customers. But it’s not just Facebook that keeps us in business; other social networks have being providing opportunities for us to reach out to groups of individuals we may have otherwise had no access to. Keeping up to date with trending social networks is as important to us as anything else these days, and the data to come out of the recent Morgan Stanley research might surprise you.

Social Network Use

Surveying over 2000 consumers ages 12-64, this research released on June 7th, 2013 holds some interesting data. The survey asked which social services consumers used in 2011, and again in 2012. Facebook seems to be dropping in popularity ever so slightly, but still holds a large majority, but about 90% of respondents using the service. Youtube user have grown dramatically from 2011 to 2012, from roughly 45% to 62%. Google + is also gaining steam despite its slow start, growing from a struggling 17% in 2011 to approximately 30% in 2012, which is just shy of the number of respondents who used Twitter. And although they aren’t as popular giants like Facebook or Google, companies like Pinterest, Instagram, and Tumblr shouldn’t be ignored.

So why is it that everything is growing except Facebook? The experts had a few ideas regarding this:

  •  Other large scale social networks are becoming a reality. These include Google +, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Social Networks from other countries.
  •  The greater use social networks with user created content like Reddit, Youtube, and Pinterest
  •  The rise in popularity of video games among the masses which don’t share easily to Facebook
  •  User Fatigue

Going Mobile

Although Facebook lost some users overall, they did gain something, 100 million mobile-only users, and that is just in the past year. If you aren’t already marketing in the mobile space, this should convince you to do so. 100 million people in the last year started using Facebook from phones, tablets, and other mobile devices. In fact, their desktop user base is shrinking, and being replaced by mobile users. This is the direction our society is taking in many forms. Work, communication, gaming, and fun are all able to be done while mobile on hand held devices, so why be limited to one central location? If you want your software or product to succeed, make sure it is mobile friendly. There is a good chance that is how it will be viewed.

Your Ad Here

For those looking to advertise, take note that Facebook captures about 16% of all the time people spend on the internet. Advertisers can deliver ads to specific age ranges or even specific customers with targeted ads. Companies such as GM spend as much as 10 million on ad campaigns, and triple that paying for their management firms. Soon Facebook will be adding video advertisements to the site to appease their customers, but possibly to the discontent of their users. It’s expected that Facebook will make approximately $4 million per day from the video advertising revenue.