Les médias sociaux toujours en croissance malgré que Facebook décline et twitter plafonne

C’est en lisant Facebook fatigue is spreading but social media is on the rise, says Internet study de TheNextWeb, qu’on prend connaissance de certains éléments du GlobalWebIndex ($3500 si vous avez les moyens de l’acheter), qui est sans doute l’une des plus importantes études longitudinales du comportement des internautes au niveau planétaire. On y apprend que Facebook poursuit sa saturation et même sa décroissance dans les marché qui l’ont d’abord mis sur la map.

More importantly across the three waves of research in 2011, Facebook users globally have reduced the frequency of key Facebook activities including sending digital presents, searching for new contacts or sending message to friends.
The latest data shows Facebook Fatigue is spreading in the US from the early adopters who it identified as “disengaging” in the GWI.5 report. Declines in social networking activity such as messaging friends fell 12% over the six waves of research, searching for new contacts fell 17% and joining a group 19% among all Facebook users in the US.

Déjà cet été, dans l’article Facebook Sees Big Traffic Drops in US and Canada as It Nears 700 Million Users Worldwide, on avait observé cette tendance à la baisse chez les plus jeunes adeptes de Facebook. À ce moment, on disait que ce n’était que la fin des classes qui avait fait se désengager les jeunes de Facebook. Un peu plus tard, on a plus justement observé que les jeunes n’aiment pas être sur le même média social que celui de leur maman et grand-maman. Par contre, Facebook semble toujours en expansion dans ses nouveaux marchés que sont le Brésil, la Chine, L’Inde et l’Indonésie.

Malheureusement l’article ne donne aucune donnée spécifique à Twitter autre que de mentionner :

The GWI data also shows the massive growth of Google+, indicating that a massive 22% of social network users now have active profiles – peaking in India at 49%. However, it also points to fatigue in Facebook usage and stalling Twitter growth.

Dans lequel nous pouvons noter que la croissance de Google+ ne fait que commencer. L’auteur souligne aussi la dominance de Google comme intersection du contrôle de l’information sur le Web

The GlobalWeb Index reports shows that Google has cemented its position as the “world’s biggest controller of information” and is starting to dominate all access points to the internet.

Its core search product reaches more than 85% of global Internet users every month (up from 76.1% in GWI.1). Even in countries where local search competitors are strong, Google has still gained traction. In Russia, it now has 82% monthly reach compared to more than 90% for local competitor Yandex.

Finalement, les médias sociaux continuent leur croissance d’usage même si le blogue aussi semble avoir atteint un point de limite :

The latest fieldwork took place in November 2011, and it has revealed that social networking is still the fastest-growing active social media behaviour online, increasing from 36% of global Internet users in GWI.1, to 59% managing their profile on a monthly basis by the end of 2011. This is followed by updating a microblog (e.g. Twitter), which increased from 13% to 24%, and uploading video which increased from 21% to 27%. Monthly ‘forum’ contribution declined significantly from 38% to 32%, between GWI.5 and GWI.6 while blog-writing stagnated at 27%.

La conclusion de l’article illustre que contrairement à l’adage populaire, le Web ne devient pas une plate-forme globale, mais il devient plutôt plusieurs centres culturels spécifiques

“This creates a more localised Internet, where each market has a different behaviour type, relationship with brands and attitudes towards the role of the Internet,” he continues. “The concept that the Internet would drive a singular global culture is false. Brands and content producers will need ever more localised strategies.”