Twitter steals march on Facebook in FS sector

Has Facebook had its day? That was the question I put to my many (ahem) Twitter followers recently. "Timeline looks clunky and there are only so many pics you wanna see of friends pulling amusing faces in the pub," I tweeted.

It certainly seems to be on the slide in the financial services sector. According to analysis from Corporate Insight, Twitter has overtaken Facebook to be become the top social network for FS firms. It covered 90 companies in its report, 57 per cent of which used Facebook in 2010 and 51 per cent Twitter. But by the end of 2011, 88 per cent were on the former and 92 per cent on the latter.

At one point, Facebook could do no wrong, but it's no longer a media darling. Take, for example, the bemused response to the $1 billion purchase of Instagram, perhaps best summed up by a spoof news piece in the latest Private Eye. Sample quotes: "Instascam's business model was founded on the belief that if we had a trendy name and could show that we had no way of generating profit, Facebook would eventually buy us for some ridiculous price." And: "Mark Zuckerberg denied he'd overpaid for Instascam saying he'd been impressed by the way the company had generated huge amounts of hype in the past two years."

For more info on the Corporate Insight research, click here.