Instagram tops Twitter for daily active users and engagement – ComScore

28 Sep 2012

Data from ComScore’s latest mobile measurement report reveals that, in August this year, photo-sharing app Instagram claimed more daily active users on smartphones in the US than microblogging service Twitter. While Twitter still has more visitors overall, Instagram users engage with the app more often and for longer periods.

According to AllThingsD, the as-yet-unpublished ComScore report measured how many users in the US accessed these services using native applications on iOS, Android and BlackBerry OS devices and via mobile web browsers in August 2012.

In May 2012, there were almost 110m smartphone owners in the US, but this study collated data from users over 18 only.

The data reveals that Twitter had 29m unique visitors via a smartphone in the US during August, while Instagram had 22m. However, in terms of daily active users, Instagram comes out on top with 7.3m to Twitter’s 6.9m. Instagram is also seeing a higher rate of engagement, with users spending 257 minutes on the site in August, on average, while the average time spent on Twitter was almost half that at 170 minutes.

While the time spent could have something to do with the time taken to load a stream of images as opposed to a stream of text, the daily visits from users is an interesting statistic. Could it be that images are growing more popular among users than text?

At just two years old, Instagram already claims to have more than 80m registered users, uploading more than 5m photos per day.

Elaine Burke is the host of For Tech’s Sake, a co-production from Silicon Republic and The HeadStuff Podcast Network. She was previously the editor of Silicon Republic.

editorial@siliconrepublic.com