What are the world’s most popular social networking apps – and do they vary from country to country? Mobile Analytics firm, Distimo, recently did a report which assessed the most popular social networking iPhone apps by downloads. They also did a comparison of this year’s and last year’s download trends.

According to the report, Facebook has dropped in downloads since 2010-2011 when numbers were very high. This could be because the app has already been adopted by so many people, and during the 2011-2012 time frame people haven’t re-downloaded the app. LINE, Viber and WeChat turned out to be the most popular downloaded app in several countries.

According to the study covered by Sarah Perez of TechCrunch:

“…from July 2011 to June 2012, Facebook’s dominance was not as apparent. While it was still the most popular social networking app by far, other social networking apps had taken over in some countries. LINE was the most popular app based on downloads in Japan, Taiwan and Singapore, while Viber took off to become the most popular app in Spain and Australia. In China and Hong Kong, WeChat was downloaded the most, and in South Korea, KakaoTalk was the most popular, as it was the year before.

The top 10 aggregated over these countries were (in order): Facebook, Instagram, Viber, Skype, Facebook Messenger, Twitter, LINE, Google+, WeChat and Windows Live Messenger. You’ll notice that Facebook actually owns several slots in the top 10 there: it offers Facebook Messenger and it acquired Instagram as well.

… The chart shows the popularity of Instagram in several countries, like the U.S., U.K., Canada, Mexico, France and Italy, for example. But it was not popular in China, Japan and Korea. Skype and Whatsapp were also doing better than Facebook in some of these countries. (Note that Whatsapp was on sale during the month). LINE is doing better than Facebook in Japan and Korea, while Kakao Story is most popular in Korea. In China, Facebook saw fewer downloads than QQ and WeChat, which had 5x-6x more during the month.”

Here’s the chart from TechCrunch:

What do you think of this study – and what is your absolute favorite social networking app? Let us know in the comments section.

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