Pinterest peaks, Facebook falters in customer satisfaction survey of social sites

Billions of people use assorted social networking sites, but just how happy are they with the likes of Facebook, Twitter, and the rest? The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), which measures exactly that sort of thing, put out its latest report on consumer satisfaction with e-businesses--that's social media, search engines, and websites--and it's an interesting look at just which service's Like button is getting a workout.

Historically, social media sites tend to rank among the lowest-scoring companies on ACSI's 100-point scale. This year, social media boasted an overall customer satisfaction rating of 71, up 4.4 per cent from the previous study. The 71 rating puts social media companies above airlines (69), subscription television (65), and Internet service providers (63).

Of the individual social networking sites, Pinterest was the most beloved site in 2014 with a customer satisfaction score of 76, stealing the crown from Wikipedia (74), which coincidentally was the only site to lose ground from 2013, falling 5 per cent from last year's score.

Google's YouTube and a newly-created "all others" category (which includes Instagram, Reddit and Tumblr) were hot on Pinterest and Wikipedia's heels with a 73 rating, followed by Google+ (71) and Twitter (69).

Perhaps most notably, tied for dead last among social media ACSI still measures with scores of 67 apiece were LinkedIn and Facebook. Yep, you read that right, Facebook, the first network to crack a billion users and widely considered to be the pace-setter among social networking sites, couldn't manage to top LinkedIn for customer satisfaction. That's LinkedIn, the social networking site for professionals that most people begrudgingly join for the sole purpose of scoring a better job.

At least Facebook and LinkedIn can console themselves in that they scored an improvement over last year, when both companies scored only a 62 on ACSI's scale. That makes them big winners in terms of year-over-year improvement.

That good news comes with an asterisk for Facebook, though. ACSI notes that the scores were measured before Facebook revealed it had manipulated news feeds as part of a psychological test on hundreds of thousands of users. (That's in contrast to the regular manipulation Facebook performs on our news feed.)

Related: Facebook tests 'buy' button to let users make purchases from their feeds

But customers in this go-around seem happy with their revamped news feed and other enhancements, so maybe it'll end up a wash. For now, Zuckerberg and Co. can take solace in a strong improvement in customer satisfaction, even if they are still tied for last in the category.