How many users do the major social networks have? It’s a simple question with a not-so-simple answer.
Measuring the number of users a social network has is not as straight forward as you’d expect. We can look at the gross number of accounts – the usual number which the sites like to talk about – but this will only tell you how easy it is to set up a username and password. Removing the number of inactive users (which itself is hard to judge) will give you the net number of active users but even then you will have to remove the spam accounts (which is also hard to judge). And after all that you would then have to look at how engaged/active the net number of active users are to get any reasonably accurate view of the health of a social site.
So, let’s try do that.
Facebook’s own data reports that it has over 955 million monthly active users (as of June 2012) and the site is expected to pass the one billion user mark in August. But this isn’t the full story, Facebook problem, or at least a perceived problem, with spam accounts. Last month the BBC released the findings on an investigation into the use of likes on the site which suggested that the number of fake accounts might be higher than Facebook suggests. Facebook says that between 5-6% of its users might be fake, which in actual numbers means that there could be 50 million fake accounts on the site.
But even removing fake/spam accounts Facebook is still the leader in terms of the number of users and user engagement.
Twitter has been more secretive than Facebook when revealing the number of users it has. But data from the analytics firm Semiocast reports that Twitter now has over half a billion user accounts and of these about 172 million of these are considered to be active. Importantly, Semiocast records an active users as someone who has edited some part of their profile (updated their profile image, following another user, or tweeted) at least once in the previous three months. The company says this number excludes spam accounts.
Twitter’s total number of active users – and remember that Semiocast’s view of an active user will be different from Facebook’s, so the two figures will not be directly comparable – isn’t actually all bad. The total number of people who actively use a site will always be lower than the total number of users who sign up. Twitter accounts also benefit from being more public than Facebook accounts; these numbers only record the users who have signed up to Twitter and don’t include the number of users who view tweets and Twitter profiles without having an account. The usability expert Jakob Nielsen calls this divide between active and inactive users “Participation Inequality” (think of it as digital version of the pareto principle) Nielsen says that the ratio of non-participants/semi-regular participants/active users can be measured as a percentage ratio of roughly 90:9:1. The actual percentages will vary according to the community but the rule that the vast majority of users will never engage will usually hold true.
In most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action.
In Twitter’s case users without accounts can be sees as the 90%, users with accounts that they rarely use can be seen as the 9%. The rest of us regular tweeters are the 1%, so to speak. It’s this 1% of users who are responsible for Twitter’s majority of tweets.
Over the past year Google has been slow to reveal actual figures for its social network but has instead preferred to concentrate on its growth rate – indeed it was the fastest growing social network. Back in April Google said that 170 million people had “upgraded to Google+” but then again, back in December 2011 the site was standing at 62 million users, number that had increased to 90 million by some reports the following month. In June Google reported that Google+ had 250 million users, 150 million of whom were “monthly active users.” The company also said that 75 million people sign into the site each day. Google expects to have over 400 million users by the end of 2012. Sound confusing?
Whatever way you stack it Google+’s audience is increasing but that doesn’t mean that users are engaging with the site. As we reported yesterday Google+ is attracting large number of bands to the site but the number of people engaging with these is still extremely small.
To put this into context, if Google’s latest numbers are accurate if would mean that the site has half the number of accounts as Twitter (as reported by Semiocast) but a similar number of active users. Here’s the logic,
Semiocast records an active Twitter user as someone who has made one change to their profile, including tweeted, in the past three months – this number is about 172 million. Google reports that 150 million people are considered “monthly active users.” So, in a single month period Google+ will see 150 million users use their account but in that same month there may be fewer than 170 million Twitter users doing the same to theirs.
Speaking of “active monthly users,” both Facebook and Google+ report their data by “active monthly users” but that doesn’t mean that what they are reporting is comparable – what amounts to an activity on Google+ mightn’t be considered as such on Facebook.
As you can see the definitions are often vague so any comparisons can only be considered as indications rather than hard facts.
What all this means is that the best judge we have for the health of a social network, the gross number of accounts, is also one of the least revealing. Facebook’s 955 million, Twitter’s 500 million, and Google+’s 250 million accounts tell us nothing of user engagement, spam, inactive or suspended accounts. All we can do is look at the numbers as best guesses and not hard facts.
But, whatever way you look at the numbers, consider this. More people in India were affected by the July power outages (~600 million) then are considered active Twitter and Google+ users (~320 million) combined.
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Hi Piers
What an interesting blog post - and such a breath of fresh air. It's really well written but the stats are amazing. I want to congratulate you on the work you've done here!
Just yesterday I was reading a piece in TechCrunch about how Pinterest was now bigger than Google Referral - but didn't conclude that actually Google Referral had doubled in the space that Pinterest had gone up 20% or that while pinterest was bigger than twitter, stumbleupon and Google referral, Google Organic was bigger than all of them combined plus direct and facebook too.
I understand that a lot of people don't like Google/Search and/or SEO. I can understand why - there are so many terrible companies selling terrible services. But I think its just as a bad to pretend that something isn't good or doesn't work because they don't like it.
But this is really open, fair and factual. The number of facebook users doesn't make facebook a better or worse platform for users or marketing.
G+ is picking up momentum by some people who like what it provides. I spoke to one entrepreneur yesterday who said to me "I've just clicked, G+ is going to be enormous"
I'd argue it already is - people just have to be moved from open search to Google account - which will immediately be G+.
But G+ is still in Y1/Y2 - Facebook is ancient by comparison. But Google and youtube and GMail are bigger by visitor number and volume. You can access G+ from GMail. you don't need to be on it.
Whatever happens - its going to be really interesting. And hard work.
Thanks,
I think, in crude terms, that Facebook is now what Microsoft was 20 years ago, clunky, not user friendly but familiar. G+ is Apple, more user friendly and better looking (and for the arty folk). I think tech people forget, and I am guilty of this myself, that just because one technology is better than another that doesn't mean that it will be used any more than its rival.
Brian Winston made the point before the social media age in 'Media Technology and Society: A History From the Telegrapph to the Internet' (http://pdscott.co/MBorvR) that society isn't shaped by technology but both shape each other.
Whether Google+ or even Facebook survives won't come down to how well it is coded but how much society desires the technology.
What Google is doing, and has said from the start, is that it doesn't need to make money from G+ (admittedly because it wants to use your data to sell ads). It can build the society around the site without trying to crowbar advertising into every corner.
Inversely, with Facebook, imho, is that it is seen as a public service. If I have photographs on my phone or a comment to say I believe I have the right to publish it online but Facebook, and sadly as we have seen with Twitter and the #NBCfail issue recently, these are not public service broadcasters but private bodies.
For those of us that do want Google+ to thrive we can take heart that we are starting to see the emergence of the G+ fanboy who will defend the promote the site - this is something that Facebook doesn't have.
You are absolutely right that G+ is still young (13 months by my count) and it still has to get that user base. I think that once it gets journalists on board (we still haven't seen a significant story broken on the site) then we can be assured that the site has grown to become a destination for users.
@ChristianHughes @primaryposition good link,cheers Christian
@patphelan @primaryposition No probs Pat
@ChristianHughes @patphelan its a really good post by @pdscott