At 12:00 AM Beijing time on October 10th, according to the latest survey report released by US investment company Piper Jaffray, Twitter has replaced Facebook as the most popular social network among American teenagers.
The survey shows that the popularity of Twitter among American teenagers is 26%, while the popularity of Facebook and its recently acquired photo-sharing platform Instagram are both 23%. The report also points out that among teenage users, the usage of Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram still far exceeds other social networks.
The report says that only 4% of American teenagers prefer the microblogging platform Tumblr, a proportion that has not changed from earlier this year; 3% prefer Google+, down from 5% earlier this year.
As Piper Jaffray releases this report, Twitter is planning for an IPO (Initial Public Offering), aiming to raise up to $1 billion in funds, a scale much smaller than Facebook's IPO last year but still highly anticipated in the industry. According to the IPO filing submitted by Twitter to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), it currently has 218 million global active users.
Piper Jaffray analysts Gene Munster and Douglas Clinton noted in their client report: "This data point may not come as a surprise, as the trend presented in our survey reports over the past two years has consistently favored Twitter. Overall, despite teenage preference trends favoring other social networks, we still believe that Facebook will have more commercialization channels on the Instagram platform and in the video field in the coming months."
Piper Jaffray obtained these results after surveying approximately 8,600 American teenagers. Earlier this year, the Piper Jaffray survey showed that 33% of teenage users preferred Facebook, while 30% preferred Twitter.
The report points out that the acquisition of Instagram "appears to be a wise decision made by Facebook, as the platform has now become the second most important social network alongside Facebook."
The report also notes that Facebook's plan to place ads on the Instagram platform will be a "stimulating" momentum for the former. Piper Jaffray set Facebook's target price at $57.