Will Google (GOOG) rethink its acquisition strategy in the wake of new data showing it still trails far behind social networking powerhouse Facebook?

That's one of the questions surfacing after market research firm ComScore found that users of Google's Google+ social network site averaged only three minutes on the site for all of January, compared with Facebook 's (FB) average of 405 minutes per user for the month. The finding was first reported Tuesday by the Wall Street Journal. Social networking sites Tumblr and Pinterest came in next at 89 minutes per user on average, says ComScore, followed by Twitter at 21 minutes and LinkedIn (LNKD) at 17 minutes.

Google is said to have aimed at buying Facebook — which last month filed for what will be a huge initial public offering — a few years ago .

David Lawee, Google's head of corporate development, told the Financial Times in an interview this month that Google doesn't plan a major acquisition to speed up its push into social networking.

"It looks now as though that's something we build internally," Lawee told the FT, adding that Google+ was on "a pretty good trajectory."

The WSJ report, though, describes Google+ as a "virtual ghost town" compared with Facebook and other social networking sites.

ComScore, which provided IBD with its usage data Tuesday, says Facebook's average usage in January was up 31% from 308 minutes in January 2011. Tumblr.com went up 35% to 89 minutes per user from 66 minutes.

Twitter and LinkedIn showed slower growth. Twitter's usage increased to 21 minutes from 19 minutes, while Linkedin was up to 17 minutes from 16 minutes.

ComScore says average minutes spent by users on MySpace plummeted to 8 minutes from 42 minutes in January 2011.