73% Of U.S. Adults Use Social Networks, Pinterest Passes Twitter In Popularity, Facebook Stays On Top

Facebook may be currently facing question marks over how well it’s faring with younger users, but among those over 18 in the U.S. it remains the social network king. According to figures out today from the researchers at the Pew Research Center, the percentage of adults using the social networks of Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter or Instagram to communicate with each other is now at 73%, and Facebook — the world’s largest social network with 1.19 billion users — remains the most popular in the U.S., with 71% of U.S. adults using it. In other words, nearly all adults that responded that they are on a social network are using Facebook. That’s four percentage points up from last year’s 67%, Pew notes. It comes at a time of heightened competition: partly thanks to the rise of mobile apps — the number of people on multiple networks is now at 42%. Among the top five networks (as charted by Pew), there is a lot more wiggle room for who comes in second after Facebook. LinkedIn — site that bills itself as the “professional” social network focused on networking, job hunting and professional information and news — is hanging on at number-two, with 22% of U.S. adults using it — up 2% on last year. Close behind it is Pinterest — which has vaulted over Twitter to number-three position with 21% usage. Twitter — despite the different services that it has launched to increase engagement like Twitter Music other discovery services; and despite the increased attention around its IPO — has only grown by two percentage points to 18%. Hot on its heels is Instagram at 17%. Google+ does not make it into the top-five mix — not because of its lack of popularity; but because Pew says it did not include it in its survey questions. Indeed, Pew’s numbers reveal a bit, confirm a bit of what we might have already guessed, but also leave a few blind spots. While there is a 42% overlap of usage across multiple sites, some 36% of respondents said that they only used one social network, and Pew notes that “22% did not use any of the five specific sites we asked about.” That could mean they used services like Google+, Snapchat, something else entirely, or nothing at all.