Facebook is still growing, but not at the same pace that it once did, according to a report by Global Web Index. For a change, Tumble is now the fastest growing social network. In the last half a year, Tumblr’s active users grew by 110 percent. Pinterest was right behind it, with a 111 percent growth.
However, Pinterest increased its overall number of users by 57 percent in the last six months, while Tumblr grew by 45 percent. Instagram comes on the third place, with 36 percent more active users and 64 percent growth in active users.
While all other social networks covered in the report had seen a faster increase in the number of active users, compared with that of new members, the numbers are opposite for Facebook. The ten years old social network had 6 percent more new users, but just a meagre 2 percent increase in the case of active users.
Even Google Plus had a better period, with 12 percent growth in new members and 16 percent growth in active users.
Facebook’s Instagram figured as the fastest growing social network in the previous report, while now it fell on the third position.
“Facebook has some major challenges to face. Firstly, people are growing tired of it, with 50% of members in the UK and US saying that they’re using it less frequently than they used to (rising to 64% among teens),” according to the GWI report.
Most of the people connected to the internet are on Facebook. The only chance to ever see growth again will be to make sure that the rest of the world has access to the Internet. Both Facebook and Google are working on innovative ideas to connect the other four billion people to the internet.
Besides the fact that increasing the number of new members seems like a tough task at the moment, Facebook has some problems with existing users. People are less active than they were almost two years ago.
“Finally, it’s clear that people are using Facebook more passively; since the start of 2013, we’ve seen behaviors like sharing photos and messaging friends fall by around 20 percentage points.”
Around 40,000 people from 32 countries have been surveyed for the GWI report. China was excluded because Facebook is officially banned. Except that, 4 out of 5 Internet users reported they have a Facebook account. More than half of Facebook’s users visit the network more than once per day.