Facebook Vs. Snapchat Vs. Pinterest Vs. TikTok: How Engagement Is Trending Into 2022

Social engagement has rebounded since May, although it is still below the "shelter-in" levels seen in the fourth quarter of 2020, Morgan Stanley said, citing its Alphawise survey.

Shortform video app TikTok, owned by China's ByteDance, is an exception, as its user adoption at 20% was about two percentage points higher than in the year-ago period, analyst Brian Nowak said.

Here is how engagement for the various social media platforms is shaping up, entering into 2022.

Facebook Stands Out With Use Cases: Meta Platforms, Inc. FB is showing breadth of use cases, with Reels, Shopping and Marketplace standing out, Nowak said in the note.

Over 40% of Facebook's monthly active users are using FB Watch, Instagram Shops, IGTV, Reels and FB Marketplace, the analyst said.

Reels adoption is increasing and it is skewing younger than the average FB and Instagram user, Nowak said. This is important to Facebook's longer-term user engagement growth, as it competes for user engagement with Snap Inc. SNAP and TikTok, he said.

Reels, along with Instagram Shopping and FB Marketplace, could potentially add about $3 billion to Facebook's 2022 ad revenue, going by the current engagement levels, the analyst estimates.

Related Link: Amazon, Facebook And 5 Other Internet Companies To Play The Top Tech Themes For 2021 And Beyond

TikTok Aces Short Video Segment: TikTok now has 67 million U.S. daily active users compared to 43 million for Reels and 19 million for Snapchat Spotlight, Nowak said. There have been user overlaps too, the analyst said.

The three are aggressively competing for engagement to monetize in 2022, he added.

Snapchat Expands Beyond Basics: Even as Chat and Camera remain the most commonly used products on Snap, other use cases such as Spotlight, Discover and Maps continue to show traction, Nowak noted.

"This multi-faceted engagement is partly why we remain bullish SNAP's platform into '22," the analyst said.

Pinterest's Long Runway For Growth: Pinterest, Inc.'s PINS overall usage was up 125 basis points since May, Nowak noted. From a use case perspective, recipe search and home décor/renovation planning remain the most common, the analyst said.

Only about 20% of users have purchased items on Pinterest, speaking to the still-long runway for growth, he said.

The extent to which Pinterest can continue to increase the user relevancy and merchant/SKU availability on the platform provides potential upside, according to the analyst. This analyst, therefore, looks for expanded merchant/aggregator partnerships in 2022 to increase the pace of merchant additions.