The Big Winners From Pew's 2015 Social Media Survey

Pew Research just released its annual Mobile Messaging and Social Media report, and the results show that Pinterest and Facebook Inc FB’s Instagram are the big winners when it comes to growth. According to the survey, usage rates among rivals Facebook, LinkedIn Corp LNKD and Twitter Inc TWTR seem to be stalled.

Usage numbers
Although usage rate growth among each of the five platforms has slowed this year, Pinterest and Instagram both continued in a positive direction. Adult usage of the two platforms has more than doubled since 2012.


Twitter registered the lowest reported usage at only 23 percent, which was the same as its 2014 number. LinkedIn’s usage rate was the only that was down three percent year-over-year to 25 percent.

Facebook booked a modest one percent usage gain over last year, but still enjoys more than double the usage rates of all its competitors.

Engagement
Facebook/Instagram dominated the results when it comes to user engagement. According to the survey, 70 percent and 59 percent of users use Facebook and Instagram on a daily basis. No other platform broke the 50 percent mark.


LinkedIn’s engagement numbers were the worst of the group, drawing daily use from only 22 percent of its users.

Messaging apps
The survey also addressed the growing trend toward mobile messaging apps. A growing number of users, particularly in the younger demographics, prefer to use messaging apps such as WhatsApp, Kik or iMessage rather than traditional text messaging. More than a third (36 percent) of respondents indicated that they use messaging apps, but nearly half (49 percent) of users age 18-29 reported using these types of apps.