SEOUL: Facebook is by far the most popular social networking service (SNS) in South Korea, according to a new poll, but BAND is the fastest growing.
Market researcher DMC Media surveyed 780 social media users between the ages of 19 and 59 and found that six in ten chose Facebook as their most-used SNS, although the figure of 59.8% marked a decline on the 64.5% the US service registered in a similar 2014 study.
Its nearest challenger was KakaoStory. This photo-sharing service – owned by Kakao Corporation, which also operates the hugely popular KakaoTalk messaging service – claimed a 17.1% share, up from 12.9% in 2014.
In third place was another photo-sharing service. Instagram, owned by Facebook, saw its share of users increase from 3.9% to 10.3%.
The fastest-growing SNS, however, was the fourth-placed BAND which saw its share leap from 1.5% to 8.2% over the year. This Naver-owned community-based service allows for traditional posting and chat, but members can also utilise group polling, events, calendar, file sharing and photo albums.
Microblogging site Twitter accounted for just 2.4%, although this was up from 0.7% in 2014.
There were also some distinct preferences in terms of age and gender. Men, for example, leant towards Facebook, whereas women were more prominent on KakaoStory and Instagram.
And younger consumers gravitated to Facebook while older ones preferred KakaoStory and BAND.
Koreans are not the most enthusiastic of social media users, however. Data from We Are Social put them near the bottom of a global table in terms of the average daily time spent on this activity.
At 1.3 hours, it was around half the global average of 2.4 hours; only Japanese users spent less time (0.7 hours) on social media.
Market researcher DMC Media surveyed 780 social media users between the ages of 19 and 59 and found that six in ten chose Facebook as their most-used SNS, although the figure of 59.8% marked a decline on the 64.5% the US service registered in a similar 2014 study.
Its nearest challenger was KakaoStory. This photo-sharing service – owned by Kakao Corporation, which also operates the hugely popular KakaoTalk messaging service – claimed a 17.1% share, up from 12.9% in 2014.
In third place was another photo-sharing service. Instagram, owned by Facebook, saw its share of users increase from 3.9% to 10.3%.
The fastest-growing SNS, however, was the fourth-placed BAND which saw its share leap from 1.5% to 8.2% over the year. This Naver-owned community-based service allows for traditional posting and chat, but members can also utilise group polling, events, calendar, file sharing and photo albums.
Microblogging site Twitter accounted for just 2.4%, although this was up from 0.7% in 2014.
There were also some distinct preferences in terms of age and gender. Men, for example, leant towards Facebook, whereas women were more prominent on KakaoStory and Instagram.
And younger consumers gravitated to Facebook while older ones preferred KakaoStory and BAND.
Koreans are not the most enthusiastic of social media users, however. Data from We Are Social put them near the bottom of a global table in terms of the average daily time spent on this activity.
At 1.3 hours, it was around half the global average of 2.4 hours; only Japanese users spent less time (0.7 hours) on social media.
Data sourced from Korea Times; additional content by Warc staff
