Battle of social news, almost too close to call

In this instalment of the Battle of the Apps, we are looking at engagement and how Twitter and Reddit compare. Social has become a primary source of information and news, and both Twitter and Reddit have evolved as destinations relied on for delivering fast, immediate and urgent information. While they have two different approaches, one as a microblogging platform, and the other as a social news aggregator, we thought it would be interesting to compare them.

When we talk about engagement, we are first referring to the overall average active hours per week that an app is used, and the number of active users. We are not interested in installs or sessions as we feel active use to be what really matters. Secondly, we look at the number of times an app is first used after their phone is picked up. We refer to this as primary engagement which offers us an interesting insight.

Using our Retro data collection technology, we had thousands of individuals share their actual app usage to provide some compelling insights. This is the same data that powered our MobileLife report.

Across a cohort of 18-25 year olds, the average active hours per week was almost identical at 1.9 hours each. Not surprisingly for news and this indicates both do a great job in keeping individuals engaged. Across the same group of users, we saw 55% were active users of Twitter in the period, compared to 37% for Reddit. In this case, Twitter is leading with the percentage of active users.

Looking at primary engagement, we found that Twitter was the first app used when a phone was picked up approximately 23 times per week. This is compared to 18 for Reddit. With an overall greater reach and slightly higher primary engagement, we have to give it to Twitter in this round.

It may be interesting to watch as new entries to the space start to make progress.

‍
Interested in this data? We have tons more. Head over and check out our Retro Storefront, explore this Retro data in detail, or check out more findings in our MobileLife report.

‍

‍