go-Digital Blog on Digital Marketing

That confirms survey evidence that Facebook is losing its luster among the younger demographic: a recent survey from Piper Jaffray found that for the first time, it was not named by teens as their “most important” social network, surrendering that distinction to Twitter.

There are some important things to remember here, though: Facebook also said that overall usage by US teens was stable, so reports of teens “fleeing” Facebook might be overstating things a hair. Also, Facebook says it is still “close to fully penetrated among teens” – and teens themselves report a far greater inclination to be spending time on Facebook rather than Twitter.

Finally, Twitter emerged as teens’ most-important social network in the Piper Jaffray study virtually by default, as the perce! ntage of ! teens giving it that title actually decreased quarter-over-quarter. The real riser? Facebook-owned Instagram, named most important by 23% of teens (on par with Facebook itself), up from just 12% in the year-earlier period. So there’s that.

Some other tidbits from the latest release:

• Total monthly active user growth (predictably) continues to slow, up by about 2.9% quarter-over-quarter, following a 4.1% rise in Q2, 5.1% growth in Q1 and 4.9% growth in Q4 2012.
• Daily active users numbered 728 million, an increase of 4.1% from Q2. (Q2′s growth was 5.1%; Q1′s growth was 7.6%; and Q4′s was 5.8%.)
• Daily active users continue to grow at a faster clip than monthly active users on a year-over-year basis (24.7% vs. 18.1% in Q3).
• Advertising revenue in Q2 was $1.8 billion, accounting for 89.2% of total revenues, up from 88% in Q2 and 85% in Q1. Ad revenues grew by 12.4% quarter-over-quarter and by 65.6% year-over-year.
• Worldwide average revenue per user (ARPU) was $1.72, up from $1.60 in Q2, $1.35 in Q1 and $1.11 in Q3 2012. On a regional basis, ARPU topped out at $4.85 in the US and Canada, while growing in each region.