The Top 10 Apps In The US

Music apps are very popular these days, but it comes as a little bit of a surprise that only one true music app (Pandora) and two apps that are used for music a lot but not exclusively (YouTube and Google Play) are in the top 10 in the US at the moment, according to this graphic by Statista based on data from Comscore.

Perhaps the biggest surprise is that Google Search is not #1, and that two map apps (Google Maps and Apple Maps) rank so high. That said, the chances are good that a new and different music app breaks into the top 10 at this time next year. Care to speculate on which one?

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The Word's Top Video Sites

When it comes to video sites we automatically think of YouTube, but there are a lot more than you think. In fact, if you want to see exactly how many, go to all-video-sites.com for a master list that shows all of the major ones world-wide. Keep in mind that most are very specialized, which limits their ability to grow. That said, here's a list of the largest video sites in terms of millions of unique users, thanks to Comscore Video Metrix.

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Facebook Loses Active Users

It's been evident that the number of unique visitors on Facebook was leveling off in recent months, but now comes evidence of a significant decline. Via an article on Hypebot, the site analyst company ComScore has determined that the number of unique visitors to Facebook have declined by 4.8% in the last six months!

This is pretty substantial in that Facebook was counting on its subscribers to rise a bit in the US rather than dropping, in order to support its recent IPO and subsequent investors. It's true that its more likely that the company will gain users in other parts of the world (in Asia in particular) as the US market seems somewhat saturated, but a decline of almost 5% is really unexpected.

So what's the reason for the decline? Are the users tiring of the Facebook experience? Do they hate the redesign (especially Timeline)? Are they using another social network instead? Are they still using the network but not loggin in? What do you think?

For the record, Facebook claimed that it has over 900 million "active" users in their last quarterly report. It'll be interesting to see what the next quarter report looks like.

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You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

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America's Most Engaging Social Network?

With all the hype that Facebook is getting as it comes upon IPO time, you'd think that it was the most engaging of all the 100 or so social networks with more than 1 million subscribers. Yes, it's the biggest, but it's not the most engaging. Neither is Twitter or Google+. Pinterest is getting a lot of hype lately as well, but that's a limited demo of mostly young mothers, so that's out too.

According to the online research firm ComScore (via an article in Mashable), Tagged is the most engaging of all US social networks. Haven't hear of Tagged yet? You will soon, because it's coming on strong.

Tagged is a social discovery site where users go to make new friends. It's been around since 2004, open to anyone over 12, and is actually profitable and growing. According to ComScore, users visit the network an average of 18 times a month, which is second only to Facebook at 36 times, but they stayed for 12.1 minutes as compared to Facebook's 10.9 minutes. The combined scores make Tagged the most engaging social network being used today in the US.

And it's not small either. Tagged has 10 million core users that make over 100 million new connections a month. Far from Facebook, for sure, but the fact that they're growing, have really dedicated users, and actually make money is a pretty big thing in the social world.

One of the problems that we have in the social world today is a limited bandwidth. It's pretty difficult to keep up with more than a couple social networks regularly, and trying to use them all as a promotional tool can be a losing battle in time management. My advice is to check out Tagged. If it appears that your fans are either core users or moving there, then it's worth spending your time there. Otherwise, just keep tabs on it from time to time to see if a shift in your demographic is taking place. There are only so many hours in the day, and you need at least some left for making music.
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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

Google+ Is A Ghost Town

If you read this blog a lot you know that I've posted quite a lot on Google+. That's because it seems to be the first serious challenger to Facebook, and of course, it's backed by one of the 800 gorillas of the tech world in Google.

And as I've been reporting, Google+ now has more than 90 million users, which is an astounding number considering that the network only started about 6 months ago.

But the real measure of a site isn't how many users it has, but how engaged those users are, and this is where G+ seems to be very, very lacking. In fact, Web research firm ComScore has recently ascertained that G+ is a virtual ghost town compared to Facebook when it comes to user engagement.

ComScore's research shows that the average user spends only 3 minutes per month on G+, compared with 6 or 7 hours on Facebook, which is an quite a large difference. It seems that even though G+ has some unique features like Hangouts and Circles, they're not enough to get most users to switch from Facebook in a big way. As a result, users of both simply dabble in G+ to see what's there, but still spend most of their time where they're still comfortable, and where most of their friends are, and that's still Facebook.

Now it's hard to say if there will be a migration from Facebook to G+ when FB's new Timeline becomes mandatory, since it seems to be universally disliked at the moment. Let's check back in a couple of months to see.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.