It seems like the rivalry in the social media arena is starting to build its base with Twitter (TWTR, Financial) and Facebook’s (FB, Financial) social networking partner Instagram competing on the count of active users. In fact, Twitter seems to be falling far behind its immediate competitor and that was well conveyed through the blog posted this week in which Instagram’s CEO Kevin Systrom shared that the monthly active users count had grown to 300 million for the phot-sharing social network owned by Facebook, while Twitter had last boasted on the count of 284 million at the end of September.
In the past few quarters, Twitter has already been struggling with slower growth compared to Facebook, its immediate contender in the social networking space. Let’s get into minute details to understand why it can be suggested that Twitter needs to buck up in the race; else a day might arrive when the site loses its total popularity to its rivals.
The intricate research says it all
Research firm eMarketer has estimated that about one-sixth of U.S. smartphone users (that comes to around 52.5 million) use Instagram. Of those, 80% are between the ages of 12 and 34.
Instagram’s CEO further stated, “We're seeing a lot of people coming in the fashion world, a lot of people coming in, in the youthful teens world, and a lot of people internationally as well…” Instagram shared that it would be rolling out a system for verifying the accounts of celebrities to cut down on imitation accounts and, with recently announced changes to Facebook including a reduction in meaningless sponsored posts and the Twitter-like ability to search for posts according to key terms, Twitter would appear to be caught in a pincer movement.
Data from Global Web Index indicates that while Instagram’s active user base has grown by 64% in the past six months; Tumblr’s has grown by 120% and Pinterest’s by 111%. On the contrary, Twitter’s efforts have only seen a 26% growth which looks pretty dull when compared to the rivals.
This number appears to show the changeability of social media habits, as when the Global Web Index released number earlier this year, Instagram was ahead in growth only by a slight margin but now the gap between Twitter and Instagram had widened by a considerable extent.
Instagram that started running ads last year, looks highly attractive to marketers with the current active user base and data has confirmed that Twitter has to use a different strategy to grow as Facebook’s Instagram seems to be converting the Twitter customers into Instagram customers while building the base of new customers.
Going forward
Twitter has been hit hard in the active user base count which seems to be depleting fast for the social networking player, and Instagram might emerge a winner in the photo-sharing domain as several Twitter users are also shifting their base to the latter as it seems to be more user-friendly. True, Twitter is facing tough contenders and only time will convey if Twitter’s management is able to grow its monthly user base remarkably in the near future.
