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Facebook Messenger usage leaps ahead of Snapchat, Whatsapp and Skype

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By Rebecca Stewart, Trends Editor

February 17, 2016 | 3 min read

Snapchat may be gaining ground on Facebook in terms of video views, but when it comes to usage Mark Zuckerberg’s firm reigns supreme.

Over 37 per cent of adults have used the social behemoth’s dedicated Messenger app over the last month according to the GlobalWebIndex’s Q3 social media landscape research.

Whatsapp, which hit the million user milestone last month, was the second most used messaging service at 33 per cent, followed by Skype which had been used by 21 per cent of respondents.

The study surveyed over 54,000 participants between the ages of 16-64 across 34 countries, and found that just seven per cent of people globally had used Snapchat over the same time period.

Though Snapchat failed to top the chart in terms of global usage, the report noted that 43 per cent of teens aged 16 to 19 in the US use the service. The young app has been hot on the heels of Facebook over the past 12 months, and back in November it confirmed it was clocking up 6bn video views per day (compared to Facebook’s 8bn) having tripled its viewing figures over a six-month period.

A few weeks ago a leak hinted that Snapchat was to integrate new audio and video calls into the platform along with a host of other features designed to bring it closer to Facebook.

The figures come as further research indicates that consumers are speaking more time on messaging apps. Facebook Messenger has been a dominant player in the arena for the past two years, having grown its user base by 600 million over the past 12 months.

In terms of straight up social apps, Facebook was the most used at 51 per cent, while YouTube and Google+ took second and third place ahead of Instagram.

Given its prominence among the users surveyed, Facebook unsurprisingly also took the crown for the highest engagement rate with 54 per cent of people saying they used it more than once a day compared to Twitter’s which fell under 35 per cent.

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