Facebook Faces Challenge from Growing Pinterest

AFP/Getty
AFP/Getty

A new study from the Pew Research Center shows Facebook still number one in social media, but its growth in the U.S. has stalled–and Pinterest is a giant-killer chopping at its knees.

A new study from the Pew Research Center shows Facebook is still number one in social media, but its growth in the US has stalled and Pinterest is a giant killer chopping at its knees. With US Hispanic adults as Facebook’s most avid and only growing demographic, it should not be surprising that CEO Mark Zuckerberg is financially motivated to spend millions on advocacy for open borders to more Hispanic immigration.

Facebook is supposed to be the king of social media in the US with 72 percent of adults logging on at least once daily, and 46 percent logging on multiple times. But its growth over the last three years has been flat. LinkedIn and Twitter have both also stalled out, but at about 25 percent of US adult Internet users logging on each day.

The hottest growth player in social media is Pinterest. According to Pew, “Today 31% of online adults use Pinterest, up from 15% in 2012.”

Facebook’s strength in daily log-ins has been concentrated in women at 77 percent and 18-29 year old millennials at 82 percent. About 79 percent of all adults ages 30 to 49, 64 percent ages 50 to 64 and 48 percent of those over 65 log into Facebook every day.

Urban are about 10 percent more likely to log-in than rural, but there is very little correlation to higher income levels or education attainment for Facebook users.

With 75 percent of Hispanic adults as Facebook’s most avid users in the US, versus 70 percent for white non-Hispanic and 67 percent for African Americans, it is easy to see why CEO Mark Zuckerberg spent $50 million to form the immigration advocacy group ‘FWD.us’.

Many Silicon Valley companies wants an unlimited H-1B program to import foreign engineers willing to work for minimum wage and live in the company dormitory. But CEO Zuckerberg supports amnesty for 11.5 million mostly Hispanic illegal/undocumented aliens and open borders for millions more presumably Hispanics, because they appear to be Facebook’s only growing base of Internet daily users.

The latest Pew numbers show that Facebook should be VERY worried about Pinterest’s growth. Although marketers predominantly want to speak to the demographic of 18 to 54 year olds where Facebook dominates, they are twice as interested in paying to display on-line ads to women.

Although the number of all on-line adult users that visit Pinterest daily has only doubled from 15 to 31 percent; 37 percent of all adults under 50 and 44 percent of all women log on to Pinterest each day. Male Pinterest use is only 16 percent male.

More importantly to marketers, the higher the college attainment and higher income attainment of female on-line users, the higher the probability they will log on to Pinterest every day.

Facebook user numbers may have looked good earlier this year to Wall Street analysts, but the Pew study released yesterday afternoon screaming that Pinterest is a giant killer chopping that is chopping at the knees of Facebook’s advertising dollars. It should not be surprising that Facebook stock was down 8 percent in the first 24 hours since the Pew report was released.

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