Among the top social networks, Facebook is the best at attracting "multi-platform users," audiences that access the site both on mobile devices and desktop or laptop PCs.
Why does the size of a multi-platform audience matter? The main reason is that digital marketing is most effective when the same individual can be tracked and targeted across screens, which is relatively easy to do when that user logs in to the same site on multiple devices (e.g., a work computer, a home PC, and a smartphone).
- Seventy-six million of Facebook's U.S. users (45% of the total) accessed the site both on both mobile and PCs, according to comScore data for December 2013. Tumblr was second-best among eight large social networks in this area, with 10 million multi-platform users, or 23% of the total.
- LinkedIn was the most desktop-dependent among these social networks. Thirty-six million or 65% of its users were desktop-only.
- Other than Instagram and Snapchat, which are primarily viewed on mobile devices, Pinterest had the highest percentage of visitors that were mobile-only. Twenty-four million of its U.S. adult users, or 48%, accessed the site only on mobile (tablets or smartphones) in December 2013.
This data complements yesterday's chart on how much time people spend looking at specific social networks on different devices. comScore's data is for U.S. users aged 18 and older.
Perhaps the biggest surprise is that more audiences aren't multi-platform.
None of the social networks cracked the 50% mark in terms of the percentage of their audience that visits across screens.
That indicates that there's a significant divide in consumer media habits. There are a lot of people who access popular social sites only on mobile and another large group that access only desktop/laptop PCs. Those that move between devices to visit the same sites are still a minority.
Click here to access the charts and data in Excel.
