Have Facebook, Twitter reached saturation?

Considering that Twitter prides itself on being the “real-time information” (i.e., news) network, it’s interesting that more users don’t use it to read the news. The popularity of mobile messaging apps is also increasing, especially the ones that delete texts once they’re sent.

Facebook is the most used social network, and hasn’t had many threatening competitors.

Facebook remains the dominant social network for US Internet users, while Twitter has failed to keep apace with rivals like Instagram and Pinterest, a study showed Wednesday.

Twitter stock hit highs in late 2013 above $70 on euphoria over the IPO but have been dogged by concerns on sluggish growth and a lack of profitability.

Mr Dorsey added: “We’ve got unbelievable brand awareness, but people are not clear why they should use it themselves”.

As the campaign season builds momentum, those posts will be accompanied by paid political video advertising, providing a healthy boost to the bottom line at Facebook, Snapchat and other social networks that stand to benefit from the new trend in campaign spending. By contrast, Twitter’s share of referral traffic in Ireland has collapsed from 14pc to 5pc over the last 12 months.

Since 2012, the numbers of Pew survey respondents who use Pinterest and Instagram have doubled. Instagram use is up to 28 percent of online adults, an increase from 13 percent in 2012. Pinterest’s daily usage surged from 17 percent of users to 27 percent over the same time period.

Recent research by Moovweb shows that only 1.32pc of mobile e-commerce traffic comes from Facebook, compared to 0.16pc from Pinterest and just 0.04pc from Twitter.

Messaging apps are more popular among younger adults with about 36 percent of smartphone owners using apps such as WhatsApp, Kik or iMessage, survey data showed.

Because the vast majority of Americans use the Internet, the figures suggest 62 percent of all US adults are on Facebook, according to Pew.

Tumblr is popular among younger adults with 20% of those between the ages of 18 and 29 reporting they use it, Pew found.

Twitter also has difficulty in luring its users back more frequently. At stake is whether Twitter – used by 316 million monthly users posting and sharing 140-character messages – can become a mainstream platform instead of a niche forum favoured by journalists and celebrities.