The trend in using mobile devices and shunning desktops is showing no signs of slowing down, with more and more people now accessing social networks from a smartphone or a tablet.
According to figures released by comScore the majority of people now access Social Networks from their mobile devices.
The research also showed that out of the eight most popular social media sites, just two – LinkedIn and Tumblr – are more frequently accessed via desktop than mobile.
Of course, for some of these networks, total or predominant access via mobile devices is unsurprising, as certain social networks depend on the use of mobile cameras: Vine, Instagram and Snapchat focus on mobile users and it is only natural that a respective 99%, 98% and 100% of traffic should come from smartphones and tablets.
A Mobile-First Focus
However, even more traditional sites are fast moving in the direction of a mobile-first focus. Facebook now receives 68% of its traffic from mobile devices, for example, and the percentage of Twitter users that go to the microblogging site from a mobile device is 86%. Facebook, perhaps the most famous social media site, had approximately 31.5 million users in the UK at the end of last year, and Twitter users reached 15 million as of last September.
According to Econsultancy, Instagram has shaped up to become the leader in mobile-first technology. The site saw an increase in users of 15% in just two months; the site’s position as a leader in mobile-first thinking was reinforced after the site introduced a video feature which had the added effect of slowing down the growth rate of its competitor site, Vine.