It came as little surprise that
Facebook
was the social network of choice in a recent survey of 7,700 teens
across the U.S. But now that the study’s authors have revealed its
numbers, we can see just how much — or indeed, how little — Facebook won
by.
The teenagers in the survey, conducted by Gene Munster and Douglas
Clinton at analyst firm Piper Jaffray, were asked to rank social
networks in order of preference, from 1 to 3. Alternatives to Facebook
included
Twitter,
Google+,
Instagram, Pinterest,
Tumblr and LinkedIn.
Facebook was the first choice for 3,280 of the teens, followed by
Twitter with 2,118 and Instagram with 928. Google+ won the hearts of 430
teens, while Tumblr and
Pinterest, respectively, trailed behind. (We don’t know the identities of the five teens who ranked
LinkedIn first, but you should probably hire them.)
However, Twitter (1,874) and Instagram (1,680) both outranked Facebook (1,580) when it came to
second-choice
votes. Google+ had its best performance in the third-choice voting,
where it just managed to outperform Twitter — but still got beaten by
Facebook and Instagram.
Still, the search giant’s nascent network (
Google+
is still little more than a year old) can take some solace from the
survey. More teens chose it over the supposedly hot services Tumblr and
Pinterest, both of which, we imagine, would perform well among
twenty-somethings.
But there’s little doubt that Facebook remains king of the hill. “We
believe Facebook is well positioned to maintain its spot as the top
social network despite competition from Twitter,” Munster and Clinton
wrote, reiterating that they think the stock is undervalued — and that
the
Instagram purchase looks increasingly smart.
What is your preferred social network? Tell us in the comments below.
