The Winners and Losers of Social Media in 2012 [Infographic]

Social Media 2012 Report Cards Infographic

2012 was indeed a crazy year in social media.

If you think about it, every single network went through some kind of transformation such as launching new features, dropping others and even major updates to their interfaces in order to increase engagement.

This is a very cool infographic from the guys at Pardot, assigning a grade to different aspects to determine which networks are the winners and losers in 2012.

In my opinion, 2012 has a positive balance for each one of the networks included in the infographic, maybe with the exception of Facebook that went public with very high expectations and disappointed.

But to me there is one obvious winner in 2012 and it’s not included here. Instagram. Forget the recent TOS issue, the network went from approximately 15 million users to 100 million in 7 months and was sold for a cool billion. The most important thing about Instagram is the penetration in the next generation.

Other than that, Twitter appears to be the most solid one of the bunch with excellent grades in Growth, Users and ROI. I’m not surprised, I believe Twitter will be bigger than Facebook.

Social Media 2012 Report Cards

Infographic courtesy of Pardot.

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About Francisco Rosales
I'm the author of SocialMouths. I also help entrepreneurs and small businesses turn their vanilla "web presence" into a profit powerhouse using techniques on social media, content and email marketing to generate traffic and convert to leads and sales. Caffeine addict and a hopeless fan of Dr. Sheldon Cooper. Bazinga! Learn more

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  • http://twitter.com/jaysfo Social Media SF

    I don’t completely agree with the ROI standpoint but a good report. Thank You

  • http://www.postplanner.com/ Scott Ayres

    Totally love this infographic! Not sure I 100% agree with their grades. But it’s a great looking graphic.. Sharing on our site now!

  • http://shroomz81.wix.com/seomaniac/apps/blog/rss SEO Maniac

    Strongly agree with all of these Social Medias!

  • http://www.agencyplatform.com/ Dave Thompson

    The infographic is really awesome. Perfectly graded and graphed. We’ll surely need to focus on these social media sites which are getting popular day by day and plan out our marketing strategy with the help of the numbers and infographics like this one. And not to forget that Instagram even though not loud is leisurely progressing. The platform is now at a stage where you better not ignore it.

  • http://twitter.com/davelucas Dave Lucas

    Creds! One of the most accurate and informative Infographics I’ve seen – let’s hope others learn from your example here!

  • http://www.skipprichard.com/ Skip Prichard

    That’s a great infograph summary. Google+ is the one I am trying to learn, but not finding it as intuitive as you would think.

  • http://www.socialbakers.com/ Michal Smetana

    I’d say that Pinterest is good for SEO as well. If the marketing strategy is done correctly and originally, you can generate really much traffic from Pinterest including many back links, which are significantly boosting your SEO. I, personally, would give Pinterest a higher mark for ROI, considering the amount of traffic this social network is able to generate.

  • http://www.facebook.com/kerry.armour Kerry Armour

    this is really, really great info, Francisco. I agree with Dave Thompson, perfectly graded and graphed!

  • http://www.roiforsales.com/ Michael Ashford

    Excellent graphic! I think Google+ has more momentum than people think. It is a sleeping giant and will be a real force in 2013.

  • http://chrismakara.com/ Chris Makara

    Simple, straight-forward info graphic. It will be interesting to see a comparison one year from now.

  • content writers

    Pinterest has been the real success story from cyberspace in 2012 with Instagram as a close second. The boom in mobile phones with internet connectivity and good quality cameras made both Instagram and Pinterest into internet fads. The past year seemed to be more about tweaking the major social networks than it was about creating a new and improved user experience which made Pinterest stand out even more in a generally uninspired marketplace.

  • Isabella Danson

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  • http://www.examiner.com/internet-and-technology-in-national/david-frankk David Frankk

    Its clear that the “Users” attribute has nothing to do with the quality of audience of the social networking site but mostly on the number of users. In terms of quality, Linkedin and Google+ have a far more real audience.

  • AJ Santos

    This is a really cool infographic. I think the reason Facebook is on the decline is because their shift has changed to accommodate the advertisement aspect of social media. It’s a move they have to make in order to stay alive, and 2013 may be a brighter year for them with the implementation of the graph search. Twitter is a social media king in terms of connecting multiple people in mere seconds. Hashtags are now everywhere within every advertisements and many businesses and corporations are beginning to catch on. All things considered, I do think that Instagram is the new up and coming social media medium. It allows for a broad user base, less annoying advertisement, and more integration with businesses far and wide. If Instagram, now owned by Facebook, can get past this recent Terms of Service hiccup I think they may be able to match Twitter blow for blow.

    Also I think it’s important not to forget Tumblr. It’s becoming a very accepted medium for the celebrity gossip enthusiasts as well as the graphic designers. Overall. 2013 looks like it’s will once more be home to numerous updates in social media as well as new contenders to the social media platform. A good notable is a new service called Path. It’s almost like Facebook, but the way it was intended to be.

  • http://www.austinburkhart.com/ Austin Burkhart

    This is a great review! I do think that pictures have really taken off in 2012 and should stay hot in 2013. I still use Facebook for a lot of that sharing but I find most of my time is spent on Twitter.

  • Kathleen S.

    The infographic is right on target. Google+ has the potential to catch up toTwitter and
    Facebook in the near future, especially for business profiles. Their algorithms
    place businesses with a Google + profile higher up in rankings, which I suspect will drive an increase in Google+ activity from many businesses .

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