YouTube has more monthly visitors than Facebook (just imagine when its merged with Google+)

Yesterday, SWI previewed data to show that Facebook was still by far the most popular network in terms of members and active users.

However, GWI also monitors visitor rates – that is, the number of internet users who say they’ve visited social platforms within the last month. And when you analyze this metric across the big 4 networks, a rare phenomenon occurs: Facebook falls from the number one spot, to be overtaken by YouTube.

Globally, 85% of online adults outside of China are regular visitors to YouTube, putting it just ahead of Facebook (76%) and giving it a considerable lead over Twitter (40%) and Google+ (30%). And this is a pattern/ranking which is consistent across all five world regions – something which underlines the importance of understanding the different ways in which people interact with social platforms. Internet users might not consider themselves to active users of YouTube, but they are visiting it in their hundreds of millions.

In March, I posted this vision: Here is how Google+ could be bigger than Facebook.