Facebook facing Stiff Competition from its rivals Pinterest and Tumblr

According to the reputed market research firm Global Web Index (GWI), Tumblr and Pinterest are growing faster compared to Facebook, in terms of members or active users. As we all know, Facebook is the number one in the social media industry with over one billion users worldwide. The recent study conducted by GWI shows that ten year-old social networking site is now facing stiff competition from the two of its rivals in terms of growth. The GWI study tells that Facebook grew more slowly than all the other popular social media sites in the last six months, which is measured based on the number of active users or members.

Tumblr and Pinterest gaining Facebook

Started in 2007, the micro-blogging and social networking platform Tumblr has now gained 120 percent growth based on the number of active users. A few weeks ago, the micro-blogging site has announced that it is now hosting over 209.3 million blogs and when it comes to membership, Tumblr has gained a 45 percent growth in the past few months. The popular visual bookmarking site Pinterest is also witnessing an increased active user growth rate by 111 percent and 57 percent of the membership. This four-year-old social networking site has over 70 million users and still counting. GWI found that the grow rate of Facebook is currently well below the rest of the platforms studied that include Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and YouTube. The study points out that Facebook has 6 percent growth in terms of its registered user base and 2 percent to its active users.

Other social networks are playing a major game of catching up to Facebook and its one billion monthly active users. When it comes to Facebook’s photo sharing site Instagram fell to third in the latest results when it was named as the fastest growing network in GWI’s report six months ago.

GWI prepared its latest report based on interviews of a global sample of 40,000 people from 32 countries. The report highlights that Facebook is far from the number one social media platform. Out of five internet users, four of them say that they own a Facebook account that includes 93 percent of people Latin America and excludes China (where it is banned). And one of two actively uses the social media site at least once a month and it includes 54 percent of the total surveyed Facebook users. Also, this 54 percent active users log in multiple times a day, out of which 20 percentage points more than second-placed Twitter.

Young Users find Facebook Boring

Many other recent surveys tell that young Facebook users, especially in the US and UK are losing interest in the site. According to the GWI report, people are getting tired of it, with 50 percent of its users in the US and UK saying that they are using it less frequently than they used to, and when it comes teenage users, the number rises up to 64 percent. For this, GWI put forward some of the top reasons why people getting less interested in Facebook.

• Since the start of 2013, GWI has observed behaviors in the Facebook usage, such as sharing photos and messaging friends which has dropped by around 20 percent.

• 37 percent of Facebook users (out of which 50 percent are teenagers) find it boring and they say that it is not as cool as it used to be.

• Facebook is witnessing an active usage drop among 16-24 year age group during 2014 and although it is a very small one which is about 0.5 percent. When you take other social networks, they are showing more active usage in the same age category which is increasing year by year.

What it means for Businesses

When it comes to brand promotional campaigns, the GWI report notes that users are increasingly active across multiple social platforms, that 91 percent of internet users worldwide visited Facebook or Twitter or Google+ or YouTube in the last month and that 19 percent visited all four social media sites. For this we can conclude that users still visit their social media accounts for fresh information which needs to be interesting and engaging.