The latest survey on use of social network services (SNS), conducted by Nielsen, the leading consumer behavior analysis company, finds that SNS users on smart phones reached 42.43 million in Japan as of December 2014, which accounted for 92% of all internet users on smart phones. SNS users on smart phones surpassed those on PC in April 2014, and the trend continued by the end of 2014.
On PC, Facebook was the biggest SNS with about 15 million users, which accounted for 29% of all internet users on PC. Twitter followed with about 9.1 million users and a share of 18%.
On smart phones, LINE and Facebook each have around 34 million users, which accounted for more than 70% of all internet users on smart phones. The third was Twitter with about 29 million users and a share of 62%, followed by Google+ with about 11 million users and a share of 24% and Instagram with about 6.2 million users and a share of 14%. Instagram was the SNS with the highest growth rate as it had 2.6 times more users in December 2014 than January 2013.
By gender, the user rate of female was higher than that of male for all of the major five SNSs, and LINE particularly had 16% more female users than male users.
By age, LINE was the most popular SNS among 20 years old or younger users, followed by Twitter and Facebook, and all the use rates were more than 80%. Facebbok was the most popular SNS among 50 years old or older users, and the use rate exceeded 60% even among 60 years old or older users. Interestingly the highest use rate among 50’s users was Google+. Also, the survey showed the remarkable fact that Twitter was used by 20% more 20 years old or younger users than 30’s users.
