Earlier this month, it was revealed that WhatsApp Messenger and BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) were more engaged on mobile devices than Facebook Messenger. It seems as though Twitter on mobile devices may be in a similar competitive struggle.
Research firm Mobidia revealed new insight into mobile usage of the Twitter and Vine applications for Android, showing slight growth of Vine app in the U.S. during 2013, while Twitter usage slightly declined. Monthly usage for the social network also declined while Vine stayed steady since its June release on the platform. Active user counts and monthly usage time increased among users of Snapchat and other services.
During an analysis of Twitter and other apps on Android from January through October 2013 and of Android Vine users from June through October 2013, some interesting trends became clear:
- The number of active monthly users of the Android Twitter application in the U.S. stayed reasonably consistent at about 19 percent of Mobidia’s sample, while the number of Instagram users grew from 22 to 25 percent and the number of Snapchat users grew from 7 to 18 percent.
- Average monthly minutes of use of the Android Twitter application in the U.S. declined from 73 minutes to 65 minutes per user.
- The number of active monthly users of Vine for Android increased slightly in the application’s first 5 months of availability. Average monthly minutes of usage stayed relatively consistent at around 32 minutes during these 5 months.
“Twitter’s competition in the mobile application space is growing rapidly”
“Twitter’s competition in the mobile application space is growing rapidly. Messaging, micro-blogging, social messaging, and photo- and video-sharing applications are all competing for users’ screen time and mind share,” said Chris Hill, vice president of marketing at Mobidia. “It will be interesting to see how Twitter deploys its new capital to increase new features and value—especially around multimedia—to fuel its growth and continue to compete. Mobidia’s mobile application usage data and platform can provide the insights to understand Twitter’s and its competitors’ active users and mobile usage and engagement.”
This information may not come as much of a surprise when looking at the explosive growth of Vine, Snapchat, and other messaging apps but it certainly spotlights the trouble both Facebook and Twitter face in maintaining their lead in the social space, especially on mobile devices.
