Social media marketing boosts Google+ to second place

This represents a considerable shift in the rankings, though it remains behind Facebook.

Though Facebook’s massive user base of one billion is going strong, Google+ has crept ahead of the rest of its social media marketing network competition by striding into second place worldwide.

This has changed the entire structure of the ranking that has been the same for a considerable time.

Trendstream, a market research firm from the United Kingdom, released their Global Web Index (GWI), which points out the ranking of the leaders in social media marketing network environment. What it indicated was that Google+ drew an additional monthly 343 million active users within the last quarter of 2012. That is a spike of 27 percent over the growth of 2011’s last quarter.

This increase propelled Google+ forward in the social media marketing ecosystem.

Twitter, on the other hand, has experienced the opposite type of effect in social media marketing. They have dropped into fourth place, led by Facebook, Google+, and even YouTube, which is owned by Google. This list puts some things into clear perspective in this marketplace, as Google owns two out of the top four social sites worldwide.

Twitter, which had long held second place, currently maintains an active user base of 288 million, which is far behind the next ahead of it. This doesn’t eliminate Twitter’s relevancy in any way, but it does show its position when compared to the others. Equally, this network is still on the grow, as it has accumulated more active users within the last few months than any of the other sites.

According to Brett Petersen, the consulting director for the GWI, “The fastest growing network in 2012 in terms of ‘Active Usage’ was Twitter, which grew 40 percent across our 31 markets.” While he is a fan of Google+, he has still said that YouTube, Pinterest, and Twitter will maintain their ability to challenge that network throughout the rest of 2013. Facebook, on the other hand, will be able to hold its top spot without any real risk of approaching competition.

Petersen added that “2012 saw Facebook shrug off the potential for Facebook fatigue and saturation in a spectacular way with active users growing 33 percent.” He also pointed out that over half of the global Internet population currently regularly accesses Facebook, making it the easy leader in social media marketing.