Top 15 Social Media Sites
Facebook is the undisputed champion of social media platforms.
Although it cannot take credit for everything starting, SixDegrees (RIP) is the one who deserves that honour. Facebook is the social media juggernaut which not only showed the world how the internet could be but also fundamentally changed how people interact with each other.
The company's turbulent beginnings and ongoing association with epic controversy have not stopped it from experiencing mind-boggling growth ever since its 2004 launch.
Facebook took only ten months for a million subscribers to reach one million and eight years to reach one billion. Facebook has 2.74 billion active users as of January 2022. This number is growing with approximately 500,000 new users each day or six users per second.
Facebook is not the most popular website, despite its popularity. Surprisingly, Facebook's 25.5 billion monthly visitors are outnumbered by YouTube's 34.6 million and completely eclipsed by Google’s 92.5 billion.
Facebook is more popular than other social media platforms among users between 12 and 34, though their US-based share is decreasing.
According to The Infinite Dial, the 58% of respondents in this age bracket who identified Facebook as their favourite social network in 2015 have dropped to 32% in 2020. Instagram is the biggest culprit. Instagram saw its share in this segment increase from 15% to 27% during the same period.
These are just a few of the interesting facts about Facebook use:
YouTube is the second most popular social media platform, with 2.29 billion registered users.
This figure might not accurately reflect YouTube's true popularity, as anyone can watch YouTube content regardless of whether they are a registered user.
The video-sharing platform, which was launched in 2005, was originally intended to be a dating site. In fact, Craigslist ads were published by the founders to encourage women to post videos about themselves and their ideal partners.
This was due to the (rather understandable lack of response) site being opened for video of any type - a decision which would eventually make Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim multimillionaires.
It was able to overcome many technical and legal hurdles on its way from being the largest video-sharing platform in the world to become the target of a $1.65 Billion acquisition by Google. This was only 16 months after the official launch.
YouTube is one of the few social media platforms that reach very young audiences. Pew Research conducted a 2020 study to determine the viewing habits of children in the United States under 11.
YouTube is popular among younger audiences, but YouTube has some amazing stats to reach the adult audience. Nearly three quarters (74%) of adults in the US use YouTube. With 68% of the total users, Instagram comes in second and Instagram with 40% is third.
YouTube traffic is dominated by three countries, with more than 30% coming from the US. The United States is the largest contributor at 16.4%. India comes in second at 9.2%, followed by Japan at 4.8%.
Two ex-yahoo! employees founded WhatsApp in 2009. Two former Yahoo! employees founded WhatsApp in 2009. Their original goal was not to create an instant messaging app (IM), but to display "statuses" next each entry in a user’s address book.
"At some stage it sort of became instant messaging," Alex Fishman (a friend of Jan Koum), told Forbes.
This accidental evolution saw the app dominate the free IM market. It would also make the founders extremely wealthy, thanks to Facebook's acquisition of $16 billion in 2014.
WhatsApp is the only social networking platform with more than 2 billion users - this milestone was reached in 2020. With the app's latest growth rate of over 2 billion users in just four years, it has seen incredible rapid growth.
WhatsApp isn't able to integrate traditional advertising into its revenue model so it doesn't provide the same marketing options as other social networks. WhatsApp is a communication tool that can be used by businesses to provide enormous marketing opportunities.
Despite the recent PR disaster surrounding an ill-advised update of their privacy policy, WhatsApp remains the most widely used mobile messaging app, surpassing Facebook Messenger, WeChat Messenger, QQ and Telegram to the title.
It speaks volumes about Facebook's power that a service within their main platform reached number four on this prestigious list.
It is also a sign of WhatsApp's ability to outperform Messenger, despite Messenger being embedded in the most popular social network.
Messenger was originally called "Facebook Chat", a simple IM tool that was introduced to the Facebook community in 2008. Facebook saw the potential of Chat as an independent app with its own unique ecosystem and revamped it to become "Facebook Messenger" 2 years later.
Messenger's owners were not afraid to introduce monetization functions into its core functionality, unlike WhatsApp. Messenger allows businesses unprecedented levels of communication with prospects and customers.
Messenger offers more ways to interact directly with leads than you could ever imagine. Messenger is the ultimate B2C marketing tool. It offers automated chatbots to answer questions and promote products. You can also see advertisements in the user’s inbox.
Facebook reports with delight that Messenger is used by over 40 million businesses to communicate with potential customers. It also claims that more than 20 billion messages are exchanged between regular users and businesses each month.
Messenger remains a distant second to WhatsApp in terms global active users, but Messenger is still the most popular choice for users in the United States.
Statista's most recent data on US IM engagement showed that 12.1% of US smartphone owners used WhatsApp, compared with Messenger's 56.8%.
One group is more age-appropriate than the others when it comes Facebook Messenger adoption in America:
With 1.22 billion active users worldwide, it is the world's number five most-used photo-sharing app.
In 2009, Kevin Systrom, a former employee of Google, founded Instagram. This was the result of a meticulous analysis of the social media landscape of that time.
Systrom was able to pivot the app from a purely whiskey- and bourbon-focused app into something more. A social media experience that is far more immersive than any other image-sharing platform at the time.
It was a remarkable social network. Instagram had reached 35 million users by April 2012, when it was acquired by Facebook for $1 billion. It reached 80 million users three months later. It reached 500 million users in June 2016.
The creation of "influencers" was one of Instagram's greatest contributions to digital marketing. Certain users' popularity gave their profiles an "inspirational" look, which led to the creation of a new channel for marketing that allowed regular people to monetize their fame.
Instagram is most appealing to people under 35 years old, with 71% being in this age group.
It is also a popular platform for B2C advertising, with over 70% of US companies actively using it as their marketing channel. Instagram has a much higher engagement rate than Facebook, which is its largest competitor. Instagram posts have a 23% average engagement rate, despite sharing similar functionality and engagement mechanisms to Facebook images.
The two largest national demographics on the platform are India and the USA, with 140 million users each. Brazil (99 million) and Indonesia (88 millions) are ranked second, respectively. Russia (56 million), is not able to finish on the podium.
WeChat is a very popular messaging app that allows users to send text messages, conduct video calls and make digital payments. It's not surprising that WeChat occupies such a prominent position on our top 100 list.
It is also testament to WeChat’s tremendous utility that the app reached this level of popularity, despite sharing users' private data with the Chinese government as part the latter’s mass surveillance and/or censorship efforts.
Despite this unfortunate collaboration WeChat has made its way into almost every aspect of Chinese culture. This is reflected in WeChat's impressive adoption rate by older generations.
WeChat registered users account for 98.5% (between the ages 50 and 80) of Chinese mobile users in 2018. 60% of WeChat users older than 60 years use more mobile data through the app than they do on their phones.
Social media marketers in the US may be interested in WeChat as a marketing channel. It's important to know that WeChat is registered by 23% of America’s mobile internet users aged 18-24.
There are many overnight success stories, and then there's TikTok. In 2017, TikTok burst onto the international stage and began to rack up adoption numbers that made other platforms scream.
TikTok was one year after its debut on the social media scene. It was among the top five most downloaded apps in the world. It was number one a year later. It was also number one by a wide margin. By staggering 250 million downloads, the fledgling social network beat WhatsApp.
For more context, take a look at this table. WhatsApp is just 60 million more popular than third-placed Facebook.
TikTok has some way to go before it can catch up to its competitors in terms its reach across the entire population. The platform has 47% of its users in the United States who are between 10 and 29 years old.
QQ is another property that Tencent owns (the other being WeChat). QQ has existed for a long time (in internet years).
OICQ was launched in 1999 under the name OICQ as a downloadable instant message service. It quickly became China's most popular platform for digital contacts and played a key role in "killing email" in China, the most populous nation in the world.
The software's outstanding file transfer handling helped QQ rise to prominence as a business communication platform. Because all their vendors and clients, partners, and clients, were using QQ, it created a network effect that made it mandatory for companies to use the software.
QQ was the first platform to go to market, particularly in a region that blocks many cloud-based apps. This helped QQ build its enormous success.
QQ is not well-known outside of China. The platform was not compatible with QQ products internationally, making it almost worthless beyond its native country.
For a Chinese audience, Douyin can be described as TikTok. Although they share the same parent company and core functionality, the two platforms are two distinct apps that target two different audiences.
Douyin is a popular channel for luxury brands in China. There have been success stories, though many have had difficulty engaging the platform's young users.
Douyin, unlike TikTok, has adopted user-monetization. It provides content creators with more concrete ways to generate revenue streams from their videos. This is mainly through integration with Chinese e-commerce platforms such as Taobao.
Sina Weibo, a Chinese property, started as a micro-blogging platform and has grown to be the third largest social network in China.
Weibo is different from other Chinese platforms. Its main focus is on user-generated content creation, delivery and consumption. It is an information hub that has been used by journalists, influencers, businesses, and everyday people.
Weibo has been a popular marketing tool for companies, and many international brands have succeeded in tapping into the huge Chinese market. Tourism Au is the most successful.
stralia was awarded Weibo's "most popular and promising outbound destination award" during a summit of Chinese influencers in 2019.
Unfortunately, Weibo information is subject to tight government scrutiny and censorship. However, this hasn’t stopped foreign companies from trying to market themselves to a third China’s population.
Telegram, a social network that focuses on instant messaging, has been more affected by WhatsApp's PR disaster than any other. The ramifications of WhatsApp's privacy policy changes were immediate when they announced them.
The chat app owned by Facebook was abandoned in large numbers. Most users traded it for Telegram which is a highly secure IM and social networking app that is popular among cryptocurrency traders and blockchain enthusiasts.
According to data from App Annie, the Guardian reported that WhatsApp fell from being the 8th most popular app in the UK between January 1st and January 12th 2021 to the 23rd position.
Telegram added approximately 25 million users in the same time period (January 1st - January 21st). This is a 5% increase on their user base in three weeks. It was also the most downloaded app on Android and iPhone in a month that WhatsApp will never forget.
The graph below shows that Telegram's popularity soared between March 2018 - January 2021. The app's monthly active users grew by staggering 150% over the three-year period, going from 200 million to 500 millions users in just 34 months.
Hootsuite data shows that Android Telegram users spend less time using the app than Facebook Messenger users. According to social media experts, the average Telegram user spends 2.9% more time per month than Messenger users.
Snapchat is a unique app that rejects the idea of "once it’s on the Internet, it’s forever".
This photo- and video-sharing platform is well-known for only showing users' posts for a short time before they are deleted. Forever. Snapchat interactions were instantly resonant with younger generations of mobile internet users because they had a sense of urgency.
It was also a great thing that Snapchat broke all the rules when it came to augmented reality filters and lenses. These features gave Snapchat interaction a unique creative flair that is not found on other social networks.
Snapchat has seen a remarkable growth in daily active users (DAU), outside of the United States and Europe.
The app's use in these two areas has grown steadily over the past four years, from Q4 2017 to Q4 2020. However, DAUs around the globe have increased dramatically in that time period, from 47 million to a staggering 99 million.
Snapchat DAUs in "rest of world" have outnumbered their European and US counterparts as of December 2020.
Two statistics are particularly noteworthy from a demographic perspective:
China's 1.5 billion inhabitants love live streaming and video-sharing. We are now talking about the second app in its category that is exclusively focused on the Chinese market.
Kuaishou, which currently has around 80% of Douyin’s active users, is the second-biggest video-sharing network in the territory.
It is functionally very similar to Douyin. However, there are important differences in how content is created and curated.
Walk the Chat, Chinese social media experts, believes Kuaishou's strong community focus is the reason it boasts ecommerce conversions that are five to ten times higher than Douyin.
A year ago, Pinterest would not have been on our list of 15 most popular social media sites and apps. Pinterest saw an unprecedented growth year in 2020. It gained more than 100,000,000 monthly active users between January & December.
Important information for brands who want to promote themselves on Pinterest: The social media platform is just beginning to expand beyond the United States.
The vast majority of social media platform users are located in the United States as of January 2021 (roughly 23%) Germany is the next closest country, with 3.9%. France comes in third place with 2.7%
This is important to remember. The phenomenal growth Pinterest saw in 2020 was due to international adoption.
In its Q4 earnings report, the company revealed that it had seen a 46% increase in international active users (MAU). The network also saw an increase in domestic users of just 11% during the same time period.
The majority of Pinterest users are female. At the moment, the gender split in Pinterest is approximately 60/40%. However, this gap is closing. The platform reported a 50% increase of male users in 2020.
It is fitting that the "frontpage of the internet", despite strong opposition, manages to stay on our list despite numerous shake ups in its leaderboard.
Reddit is the place to be if you are a niche-obsessed. You can find people who share your interests and passions, so it's almost certain that you will find someone to support, educate, and have fun with you.
Reddit was founded in 2005 and is one of our oldest social networks. This can be seen by its resemblance to old-school discussion boards. Reddit's ability to attract new users has not been affected by this. Reddit has maintained a 30% year-over-year increase in MAU.
Reddit is thriving in the US where 25% of adults use it to share and read information. Reddit.com currently ranks 8th in the country and has an average visit time of 20.06 minutes. This is comfortably more than Amazon, Wikipedia, Yahoo!, Twitter and eBay.
Reddit's desktop traffic is 50.8% American, with Canada (7.85%), and the UK (7.76%) occupying the second two spots. Australia is not represented on the podium (4.34%).
Reddit currently has more than 2.2 million subreddits. These communities are independent and exist without any interference or moderation from Reddit. Reddit's success has been largely due to this autonomy. Reddit's users can form strong communities around obscure topics, which breeds loyalty to the platform.
Users can engage in conversations, share information, and produce content for the web using social media platforms. Social media can take many different forms, including blogs, microblogs, wikis, social networking sites, photo and video sharing websites, instant messaging, podcasts, widgets, virtual reality, and more.
.According to the most recent data, Facebook will have 2.94 billion active users in 2022 and will still be the social media king. Approximately three out of every four of the 3.96 billion social media users are active Facebook users, according to this statistic.
.Facebook was the most widely used platform, with 95.8% of students using it regularly. Next in popularity were YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, with respective usage rates of 77%, 71.3%, and 69%.
.With its headquarters in San Bruno, California, YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform. On February 14, 2005, Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim officially launched it. After Google Search, it is the second most visited website and is owned by Google.
.It is a useful tool for sharing, creating, and disseminating information as well as for communication with people locally and globally. Through reviews, advertising, and marketing strategies, social media can affect consumers' purchasing decisions.
.Birth of the first social media platform (1997) SixDegrees.com, one of the earliest genuine social media platforms, allowed users to create lists of connections, set up profile pages, and send messages within networks.
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