Facebook has been synonymous with social media since online networking gained traction. As the reigning king of social connections and conversations, marketers built brand presences on the site to reach active consumers, but they may need video marketing and new popular sharing channels to cater to changing social tides. Now, The Futures Company released data to Mashable indicating the end of Facebook’s domination may be in sight. The usurper? YouTube.
Suprised? Savvy marketers shouldn’t be. YouTube has quietly been building up a strong membership crowd for the past few years and the video sharing site now boasts more than 1 billion unique viewers every month.
This previously positioned the network as the runner-up in terms of raw member counts, but it’s also taking over as younger users’ favorite platform. According to the Futures Company, half of the 4,014 survey respondents between the ages of 12 and 15 list YouTube as their favorite site.
Respondents between the ages of 12 and 15 list YouTube as their favorite site.
Facebook took second place as the most popular among 48 percent of respondents. Twitter and Tumblr are considerably behind, cited as the favorite networks for 19.5 percent and 12.3 percent of respondents, respectively.
While this data points to a shifting social landscape and possibility of a time when Facebook isn’t the go-to network for consumers and marketers, that transition is not quite upon us yet, according to Rob Callender, director of youth insights at the Futures Co.
“Our new findings do suggest some weakness … but Facebook remains the favorite website overall among our sample of 12- to 29-year-olds,” said Callendar.
Marketers who see this trend and act quickly have lead time to get video marketing strategies in motion before this younger group matures into their target audience. For those looking to get started, Brafton created a resource to help marketers get their video campaigns off the ground, from the start of production to way streaming media generates purchases.
