2678 respondents participated in the second wave of the longitudinal study. Social media use in general has not changed much. Most popular were still social network sites for private use (73.1%), followed by social media for business, such as Linkedin (24%). Only 14.8% engaged in microblogging.
Facebook is still the most used social network site for private use; however, Google+ is slowly winning ground. 5.7% of the people who use a social network site for private purpose name now Google+ as their favorite social network site, in contrast to 1.9% in wave 1.
However, users became slightly more passive on Facebook: they post less frequently and read more frequently. At the same time, the motive “staying up-to-date” increased significantly, indicating that Facebook is more and more also used as a news medium.
In general, the pattern of motivations (see last post) remained the same. However, for twitter there was an interesting switch: Men now use it more for socializing than for information seeking, whereas the opposite pattern is found for women: