GWI Social: Facebook still leads, other social media platforms are growing

According to GWI Social, a new report provides a comprehensive overview of the latest social media usage trends. The most important headline is that, despite what some other recent reports say, Facebook still maintains its number one position among social media platforms.
While Facebook lost some users in 2013, and the number of teen users is trending downward, some important points are made: It remains the most popular network in the world, outside of China. For the longest time, it can boast the most members, the most active users, and the most frequent visitors. At the same time, the rate of its decline has slowed over the past six months, with users falling 3% between the second and fourth quarters, compared with a rapid decline at the beginning of 2013.
Some of these issues require continued attention, but these trends clearly do not reflect a defunct or widely abandoned social network. Facebook’s entrenched place in the internet makes it unlikely that it will become irrelevant any time soon.
Even so, the site will face some challenges. GWI Social shows that 25-34-year-olds now make up the lion's share of its active users, rather than the 16-24 age group that was its sweet spot. But Facebook isn't the only one in this situation: The age of the major social media platforms is shifting upward, with the only social media platforms with 16-24-year-olds as the dominant users being Instagram, Tumblr and YouTube.
Clearly, some of the biggest players are no longer as demanding of their genres as they once were to appeal to young Internet users. That’s not to say they’ve given up on teens entirely—after all, their estimated numbers of teen users are still substantial—but they’re no longer as irresistible to the spirit and fashion as they once were.
In fact, the biggest trend on GWI Social is the rapid growth of anonymous users across online platforms, led by Instagram (up 23% in active users) and Reddit (up 13% in active users).
In the app space, the numbers are impressive: Vine is up 105%, and all messaging apps are seeing an increase in usage – some exploding. Facebook Messenger is up 13% globally, showing it is still the most popular social tool in this competitive space, but other apps are seeing faster estimated user growth, WhatsApp (+35%), Snapchat (+54%), and most notably WeChat, which is up 379%, now second only to Facebook Messenger. Clearly, 16-24 year olds are the heaviest users of these platforms.
Mobile is driving growth elsewhere, too. Mobile users are some of the most frequent and active web users, and the broad use of mobile devices for web activity is growing (while PCs and laptops are declining). This certainly suggests that Facebook and the major web platforms will have to work hard to maintain the interest of their increasingly mobile-first audiences, especially as the social media landscape becomes more diverse and competitive than ever before.