The Pew Research Center report found 72 per cent of Americans who are online now use Facebook, a modestuptick of one percentage point from a year ago and five points higher than in 2012.
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Meanwhile, unlike Facebook, 70 percent of whose users use the site on a daily basis, Twitter also has difficulty in luring its users back more frequently.
The Pew report found that 29 percent of American adults use messaging apps such as iMessage, Kik or WhatsApp.
“The emergence of messaging apps is noteworthy as these communication tools serve different social needs than traditional online social networks”, the Pew study lead author Maeve Duggan said in the study release. But even among older users, these types of services have taken hold; almost a quarter of adults 50 and older also use messaging apps. “The data also show how swiftly an already complex terrain of interaction is becoming more varied”.
Has social media usage nearly peaked in the US?
Some 10 per cent of online adults said they used Tumblr, the blogging platform acquired two years ago by Yahoo.
The study showed Pinterest, the bulletin-board style network, was used by 31 per cent of those surveyed, while Facebook-owned photo-sharing network Instagram grabbed 28 per cent, with both showing significant growth.
Pinterest more than doubled its user base in the past three years. That explains why so many sites are focusing on overseas growth, as well as on developing new services that keep users on their pages for longer.
More than half of Instagram users, 59%, visit the platform daily. Only 38 percent of Twitter users report visiting the site every day.
Turns out that Hillary Clinton is in the minority when she talks about favoring a Snapchat app that automatically deletes messages (she is under the gun over allegedly classified emails on her server), but that may be a factor of age.
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The Pew report is based on telephone interviews conducted from March 17 through April 12 among a national sample of 1,907 adults.
