While some critics have accused Twitter of censor free speech over the past year, the site’s users were much happier with the social media giant’s product than they were 12 months ago.
Satisfaction with Twitter is up 11% in the past year, according to a newly published 2021-22 e-business survey by the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI). This follows a sharp decline in user satisfaction in last year’s survey.
Despite the jump, Twitter still has a lot of work to do when it comes to customer satisfaction. The site ranked 10e out of 12 social media companies surveyed, with a score of 68 (out of 100). And it remains to be seen what effect the volatility of the past two years will ultimately have on Twitter, as the ongoing battle over Elon Musk’s suggested (then leave) effort to buy the site is far from over.
TikTok and Tumblr were the only other social media companies to show improvement in customer satisfaction scores, both of which received a point in the survey. Pinterest and Instagram posted the biggest declines, both down 3%, while Facebook posted a 2% loss, making it the lowest-ranked platform on the index. Pinterest topped the list, with a score of 76.
The ACSI has measured customer satisfaction in various fields for 25 years, tracking more than 400 companies in 47 industries. The e-business survey examines customer satisfaction in three areas: social media, online news and opinion, and search engines. Ann Arbor, Michigan-based ACSI spoke to 5,499 consumers to collect its data.
Thanks to Twitter’s jump, social media has generally pushed out a gain of 1.4% over the past year. However, the other two fields showed cumulative losses of approximately the same amount, meaning: Americans’ frustration with major media companies continues to grow. Satisfaction with FoxNews.com hit rock bottom (although the site still ranked second in its category) and CNN.com saw the biggest drop, dropping it to the bottom of the list.
HuffPost and NBCNews.com both lost a point, while NYTimes.com and ABCNews.com remained stable. There was only a two point difference in satisfaction between FoxNews.com and CNN.com, perhaps reflecting a dissatisfaction with the online mass media news world in general.
“We’re seeing satisfaction with all major online news outlets declining or stagnating, with little differentiation among the largest sites,” Forrest Morgeson, an assistant professor of marketing at Michigan State University and emeritus director of research at the ACSI, said in a statement.
According to the ACSI survey, it was smaller news and opinion sites that attracted people. The undefined category “Other” topped the list, ranking 76. This could reflect the growing trend that Americans rely on news and answer sites that: reinforce their own beliefs.
That anti-mainstream push also extended to search engines and information sites. Google saw its satisfaction score drop by 5% to a score of 75, equal to Microsoft’s MSN. (Bing is still low on love, in last place, next to AOL, down a point from last year.)
As with news, consumers gave the highest marks to ‘other’ search engines and information sites. While the report doesn’t describe that field, it could cover everything from DuckDuckGo and Swisscows, both of which don’t collect or store users’ personal information, to Startpage, which provides Google answers without tracking and storing the user’s search history. .
Overall, consumers seemed happiest with search engines of the three categories the study examined. And online news generally beat out social media, which is viewed slightly more favorably than the US Postal Service and hospitals.
None of the tech categories came close to the leaders in customer satisfaction, which included full-service restaurants (ranked first) and breweries (ranked second, next to cell phones and PCs).