BANGALORE: An increasing number of people are now using mobile messaging apps like WeChat and WhatsApp to communicate with their friends rather than using social networking platforms such as Facebook and Google+, according to GlobalWebIndex (GWI) Research. While social networking is one of the fastest rising online activities — up 187 percent globally and 242 percent in Asia Pacific region — the gap between users with accounts and those actively using is significant.

GWI surveyed about 42,000 respondents in the Asia Pacific region, including 5,000 respondents in India during the year. According to GWI, 83 Internet users had Facebook accounts, but only 47 percent actively used the website. In India, 93 percent said they had a Facebook account but only 48 percent had active usage. Also, the number of global users using Facebook to message a friend has continued to decline from 512 million in Q1 2013 to 402 million in Q4 2013 to 313 million in Q3 2014.

About 28 percent of respondents from India said they “logged in to see what’s happening without posting/commenting on anything myself” on Facebook, Twitter (23 percent) and Google+ (21 percent).

At the same time, number of people using mobile messaging services has increased from 446 million in Q1 2013 to 538 million in Q4 2013 and 616 million in Q3 2014. Respondents said they were not interested in using Facebook like before, they were bored or generally spending less time on social networks as top reasons for using the world’s largest social networking lesser.