This Is America’s Favorite Social Medium

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Jul 29, 9:30AM EDT

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This Is America’s Favorite Social Medium — © diego_cervo / iStock via Getty Images

American Customer Satisfaction Index E-Business Study 2020-2021 has just been issued. Pinterest topped the list with an approval rating of 78%. It was one of the few social media with a score that increased from 2020 to 2021. It was higher by 1%. The platform allows members to share images, videos and animated GIFs. It is rarely considered near the top of the social media food chain, at least in terms of size. It has 500 million monthly active users, a small fraction of industry leader Facebook.

The social medium that was battered was Twitter. It was in the basement of the ACSI poll with a score of 61, which was down 10% compared to 2020. David VanAmburg, managing director at the ACSI, commented, “While Facebook is traditionally near the low end of social media, Twitter’s sudden plunge is quite surprising.” That is not much of an answer. Twitter posted revenue of $1.19 billion in the most recent quarter, or 74% more compared to last year. It had been the preferred social medium of former President Donald Trump, at least until he was kicked off the platform permanently on January 19, after a period of agonizing by management.

Google’s YouTube took second place with a score of 76, up 1%. Parent Alphabet has just announced its second-quarter results. YouTube was an unusual source of financial strength. Its revenue rose from $3.8 billion last year to $7.0 billion.

Facebook posted poor numbers, as usual. Its score was 62, or down by 3%. It also just announced earnings. Facebook’s revenue surged from $18.7 billion in the second quarter a year ago to $29.0 billion. Monthly active users reached an extraordinary 2.9 billion. Obviously, a low rating by ACSI has not hurt its popularity. As it announced its results, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, “We had a strong quarter as we continue to help businesses grow and people stay connected.”
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While some social media post poor scores with users, it has not hurt their growth. With revenue up well into the double digits for most of those cited, their extraordinary growth seems secure, at least for the time being.

Click here to see why Facebook earnings expectations are so high.
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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.