A new study reveals social network users are not big fans of Facebook or LinkedIn but they do love Pinterest.
The American Customer Satisfaction Index puts the social network and the business network place at the bottom of all major social media websites. While the two networks did receive better overall satisfaction than in the previous year's study, they remain far behind Pinterest, which has garnered the best user experience.
Twitter did not receive much better reviews, finishing just above Facebook and LinkedIn, but the E-Business Report (PDF-registration required) did say that, overall, users experienced improvement across almost all social media platforms.
"[Pinterest] has made steady gains with pinners over the past three years, but improved features and search functions now push Pinterest to the top of the social media category for the first time," the ACSI said in a statement.
Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn were among the most criticized and "worst-performing companies" as a whole, beating out only airline companies, cable television and Internet service providers in overall user experience and satisfaction.
"Even with improvements across the board, e-business -- and social media in particular -- doesn't do well in terms of user satisfaction," Claes Fornell, ACSI chairman and founder, said in a statement. "It is rare to see strong growth in an industry with such low customer satisfaction. However, several of the major players seem to have realized that their long-term prospects may be in jeopardy unless they do better."
As a whole, Facebook saw its rating increase 8 percent over the 2013 report, with an overall rating score of 67 out of 100 total points possible. Sadly, and many media outlets pointed to this fact, the increase in the social network's score came before a controversial news feed experiment became public knowledge recently.
The revelations that Facebook consciously changed some users' feeds on their personal pages to gauge what they would and would not click on has led to an increasing amount of frustration from users against Facebook and has raised concerns over one's privacy on the network.
Still, maybe it is time for Facebook to look more closely at what Pinterest is doing to improve on its overall satisfaction standards for its more than 1 billion users.
