In the battle for the most users, Facebook is king. While both Twitter and Google Plus have been competing for second place, they still have yet to come close to challenging Facebook. The goal of these social platforms is not only gaining new users, but efforts to keep them engaged and active as well. The previously identified trend of Facebook Fatigue seems to have disappeared as recent studies show that Facebook active usage is booming.

Facebook Active Usage: Global Web Index

Global Web Index released their latest Stream Social report for Q1 2013 last week. This report discusses some of important trends in Facebook active usage:

“The most significant trends are:

• A rise in active engagement across all social platforms with Twitter the fastest growing
• Local social platforms continue their decline around the world with the exception of China and Russia
• Mobile is playing a massive role in driving real-time active usage of social platforms in all markets
• Older internet users are also driving social platforms growth globally
• Google+ remains the number 2 social platform in the world with 359 million monthly active users

Starting with Facebook, the world’s largest social network has seen its total number of active users (defined by those who have used or contributed to the service in the past month) increase by 35% between Q2 2012 and Q1 2013. Twitter has seen even faster active user growth, and at 44% growth in the same period, is currently the fastest-growing social platform in the world by active users. Google+ continues to register strong growth as well with its active users base growing by 33% between Q2 2012 and Q1 2013.

The driving forces behind these impressive performances – especially interesting given the evidence of “Facebook Fatigue” we found couple years ago – are two key factors: mobile and older users.

Mobile is by far the main factor, and since Q1 2011, the number of people access the internet via a mobile phone has increased by 60.3% to 818.4 million across the 31 GWI markets.

Further evidence to support the fact that mobile is driving social can be found when we compare the active social platform usage of iOS and Android users to the average. iOS and Android users are significantly more likely to use Facebook, Twitter and Google+ compared to the average internet user around the world. For example, iOS users in Germany, France, the Netherlands, the US,and the UK are nearly twice as likely to use Twitter compared to the average and in Poland, they are four times more likely to use the micro-blogging service.

The impact of older user groups is more limited but still significant. Between Q2 2012 and Q1 2013 Twitter’s fastest growing age demographic was 55 to 64 year olds, registering an increase in active users of 79%. Both Facebook’s and Google+’s fastest growing age demographic was 45 to 54 year olds, growing by 46% and 56% respectively.

Importantly, these trends have increased Facebook’s active user to accounts ratio to 82% while Twitter and Google+ see their active user ratios at 62% and 60% respectively.”

Facebook Active Usage: Are Users Really Engaged?

According to Sharon Maclis, there might be some skewing of the Facebook active usage statistics:

“It turns out all those “daily” users may not actually be using Facebook every day after all. In an amended filing with the Security and Exchange Commission Wednesday, Facebook admits that their data are skewed by mobile apps that regularly “check in” — whether or not the user has actually engaged with Facebook at all. More specifically:

“Our metrics are also affected by applications on certain mobile devices that automatically contact our servers for regular updates with no user action involved, and this activity can cause our system to count the user associated with such a device as an active user on the day such contact occurs. We estimate that less than 5% of our estimated worldwide DAUs as of December 31, 2011 and 2010 resulted from this type of automatic mobile activity, and that this type of activity had a substantially smaller effect on our estimate of worldwide MAUs and mobile MAUs.”

So basically, you’re a daily Facebook user if you have a smartphone and set up a Facebook app but didn’t disable automatic background activity, as long as your phone is on. Facebook says that’s only 5% of their daily users, but they don’t say how they come up with that “less than 5%” figure.”