• by Steve McClellan  @mp_mcclellan, August 27, 2013

Google Maps is the most popular mobile app in the world, according to new research by London- and Singapore-based research company GlobalWebIndex. In the U.S., Facebook tops the charts, according to the firm. The findings are based on a survey of Internet users covering the second quarter of the year based on their usage of apps in the month prior to being polled.

According to the global survey (found here), Google Maps was used by 54% of the world’s nearly 970 million smart phone users.  The app, the firm concluded, is “the go-to solution for lost and confused consumers.”

Just looking at the U.S., an even greater percentage of users are lost and confused—57% used the app to find their way out of the wilderness. But that was only good enough to rank third in the states in overall popularity. Facebook was number one, with 76% of respondents indicating they had used the social network’s mobile app in the last month.

Facebook was number two globally, with 44% of respondents saying they used the app.

YouTube was third in global usage (35%) and second ranked in the U.S. (62%).

Google+ ranked number four in the world (30%) and sixth in the U.S. (24%). Twitter was ranked fourth (57%) in the U.S. and sixth globally (22%).  Facebook Messenger was fifth in the U.S. (34%) and 8th in the global ranking (22%).

Ranked fifth globally was Weixin / WeChat (27%), the Chinese service, which GlobalWindex concluded was “an impressive performance considering that it is basically used only in China, Hong Kong and Malaysia.”

Instagram was number seven in the U.S. and 10th in the world, while Skype was 8th in the U.S. and 7th globally.