Facebook, Twitter don’t please Americans much now

While nearly two-thirds of American adults use social media, the ever mushrooming industry falls behind in terms of satisfaction. According to an annual e-business report from the American Customer Satisfaction Index(ACSI), though people are generally pleased with their overall online experience, social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook have seen a marked decrease in satisfaction year on year.

Facebook marked a reduction of nine percent with 68 points while Twitter dragged down by eight percent with a score of 65. The cumulative effect was a drop in social media category which scored 73 out of 100, a drop of 1.4 percent from last year.

ACSI's managing director David VanAmburg said, "People who use social media are particularly touchy about two elements of the experience that are never going to go away as issues. They're concerned about privacy and about doing the very thing that social media is all about - putting personal information out there and then being concerned with what people are doing with that information."

The ASCI study, based on 5,125 consumer interviews conducted in the second quarter of 2016, also showed an uptick in satisfaction for e-businesses. Social media, search engines, information sites, and news/opinion websites improved for the third straight year, with an ACSI score of 75 on a 100-point scale.

Also, advertising continues to be a big let-down. "Consumers have not fully accepted advertising as a necessary cost for online services they have come to expect as free,” said Claes Fornell, ACSI chairman, and founder in a statement. There is little companies can do to change that perception beyond making sure that those advertisements are relevant and non-disruptive."

Wikipedia was the top-rated site in the social media category, with the above-average score of 78, followed closely by YouTube (77) and Google+ (76). Pinterest (76), Instagram (74) and Tumblr (67) all dropped three percent. LinkedIn (65 percent) tied with Twitter for the last place.

VanAmburg said, "It’s impossible for global brands with massive user bases like Facebook and Twitter to make everyone happy, especially when both are trying to do so much. YouTube and Wikipedia are different, he said, because they provide a very specialized and focused experience."

However, customer satisfaction accessing social media sites is higher on mobile apps (73) and mobile browsers (72) than on desktops or laptops (71).

The survey also revealed that social media falls little short of keeping content as fresh as users would like.

Search Giants:

Search engines and information sites are giving more satisfaction with the ease of navigation, variety of information and services they provide. Compared with social media, satisfaction with these sites is much higher on mobile devices - mobile apps (80), mobile browsers (77) and desktop/laptop (73).

As usual, Google retained the top spot with a score of 84. That gives Google a nine-point lead over its closest competitors - Bing (up four percent) and MSN (up one percent) which both scored a 75. Yahoo (74) is a close third, but satisfaction with Yahoo dropped one percent. About.com, Answers.com, and AOL tie for the bottom spot with a score of 69, eight points below the industry average.

VanAmburg said, "Google is still king and unlikely to be going anywhere. It's essentially a race between Google and everyone else. The smaller search engines and information sites just can't compete with the simplicity and yet power of what Google can provide as a search engine and as a gateway to the wider Internet, whether you're looking up a news item or just searching for a recipe."

News and Opinion Sites:

ACSI survey found that satisfaction with news and opinion websites is noticeably up this year; the category jumped four percent to 76, its highest score ever.Most of the survey respondents said they access news sites from a traditional desktop or laptop.

"Nearly every website improves, regardless of political leaning, showing that the most interesting and unpredictable election in decades has been good for the news business," the report noted.

One of the reasons for the stronger satisfaction is better scores for fresh content (80), ease of navigation and variety of information (78) and overall site performance (77).

"People are fascinated by the news right now because of the political campaigns and they are increasingly satisfied, regardless of their own personal political bent, by the content and the opinion pieces that they're reading on their favorite news sites," VanAmburg said.