One of the biggest challenges in social event management is understanding how to optimise your…
Looking for the latest social media statistics? Do you want to find out which social media site is right for your brand?
It doesn’t matter whether you’re building a presentation, a pitch, or you’re just plain curious, these social media statistics will help you gather the details you need.
All the data here is regularly updated, but I will generate a new post each year.
Based on the statistics, I’ve also ranked each social media network based on the data.
Bonus: Grab the full infographic at the bottom of this post to share on your site!
Top insights – with the move to video and with an increasing focus on Influencer Marketing, platforms such as TikTok are grabbing market share.
The other trend is the continued growth of messaging apps and stories that are set to continue in 2020. WhatsApp and Facebook messenger both show strong growth.
Table of Contents
The world of social media is fast-paced, and it changes rapidly. To keep up with the continuously evolving social media space, here are some general social media statistics to get you up to speed.
Social media is still dominated by the top social networks and Facebook in particular. Apps like Snapchat, Twitch, and Tiktok may get a lot of press, but less than 10% of marketers use them.
91% of social media users access social channels via mobile devices.
If you find anything in this article that is outdated or inaccurate and you can provide a credible source, please let me know in the comments section.
So now let’s take a look at the figures.
Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg and launched in 2004. During its creation, Facebook was only initially limited to Harvard students. However, as it became popular it was promoted to other Universities and then to anyone over 13 years old.
Fast forward to the present day and Facebook has become the largest social network in the world.
Moreover, Facebook is the benchmark for what is possible.
First of all, let’s take a look at the size of Facebook social media statistics:
Most of these stats are taken from Facebook’s quarterly reports and the Facebook Newsroom.
YouTube was created by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim in 2005. First of all, YouTube is the second biggest search engine, that means a lot of people use it.
Second, it’s ranked number two, which makes it a great place to market your business.
What so incredible is the size and scale of YouTube as you can see in their social media statistics:
YouTube advertising is based on a cost per view – it is one of the most cost-effective advertising solutions:
Many of these stats came straight from either the YouTube Blog and their Press page.
WhatsApp is an instant and secure messaging application. It was founded by Jan Koum and Brian Acton in 2009 and later bought by Facebook for $19 billion in 2014.
Eleven years in and the 11 years and you can see it has become a dominant force in communications and social. Whatsapp social media statistics:
This data was sourced through a number of different sources.
Facebook Messenger launched in 2011 and since then it has become one of the most downloaded apps.
Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged that private messaging, ephemeral stories and small groups are by far the fastest-growing kinds of online communication. Since Facebook owns Whatsapp as well as Facebook Messenger it is well placed to take advantage of this trend.
WeChat was developed by and belongs to Chinese tech behemoth Tencent Holdings – the fifth-biggest company in the world, worth $500 billion.
Other names in the Tencent stable include QQ Messenger and Riot Games (League of Legends), among many others. It also holds various significant stakes in other international app names (Snapchat, Fornite).
Instagram was created by Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom in 2010. Initially, it was mainly designed to help people share photos and videos, both publicly and privately. As a result of early success, it was acquired by Facebook in 2012.
In a short time, 8 years, Instagram has become one of the biggest social media sites. Take a look at these amazing Instagram statistics:
Musical.ly was rebranded as TikTok after being acquired by Chinese company ByteDance the year before. TikTok has created a massive stir in social media and a revival of short video clips. Now, it’s even more interactive, collaborative, and downright addictive for many users.
It has surpassed all other apps for downloads and is growing faster than any other social media platform. At a valuation of more than $75 billion, it’s the first Chinese internet company with a “significant, genuinely engaged following around the world,” according to The Verge.
Brands are now focused on seizing the opportunity to capitalize on the app’s remarkable success to launch influencer marketing campaigns with top TikTok creators. TikTok is the world’s hottest app and is rapidly expanding into the influencer marketing arena, and so marketers need to know these essential TikTok statistics :
Weibo is the Chinese equivalent of Twitter. With more than 462 million monthly active users on the platform, many international companies have registered for Weibo official accounts to promote their brands in China, such as L’OrealPro, Coca-Cola and The Australian Tourism Board. What’s impressive is the revenue generated through ads – $1.72 billion, with $1.5 billion coming from marketing and advertising revenues.
Reddit is a discussion and web content rating website. It was founded by Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman from the University of Virginia in 2005.
And while it isn’t receiving anywhere near as much press buzz, it is a thriving and vibrant community of people. Many of them total trolls, but hey, trolls are people too.
It’s also been known to completely tank websites by sending enormous, and unsustainable amounts of web traffic when things hit the front page. So, be sure to use it for your own blog posts with caution.
A lot of these statistics can be found if you search through their advertiser or press pages.
A 2016 study found people between the ages of 30-49 accounted for 33% of the site’s users, indicating that Reddit is a viable platform for reaching both young and middle-aged adults.
Twitter was founded in March of 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone and Evan Williams. Initially, it was created as an experiment in messaging. Fast forward 12 years and it is a global phenomenon.
In Twitter’s own words:
[Twitter is] what’s happening in the world and what people are talking about right now.
Pinterest is a mobile application that enables you to find information on the World Wide Web. It was founded by Evan Sharp, Ben Silbermann and Paul Sciarra in 2010.
LinkedIn is a professional networking service that was founded in 2002 but later launched in 2003.
It started as a place to simply keep your resume updated and didn’t really turn into a full-on social network until Facebook was well into its prime.
Microsoft, recognizing the value of LinkedIn, acquired the company for $26.2 billion in 2016. However, unlike many other social media platforms, which rely on advertisements, LinkedIn’s services are something for which users are willing to pay. LinkedIn is projected to hit $6.4 billion in revenues for 2019.
LinkedIn is an especially good source for discovering leads. Hubspot found that LinkedIn is 277% more effective at generating leads than Facebook and Twitter.
The active user base of LinkedIn is debated. Using SimilarWeb data, We Are Social and Hootsuite in October 2019 estimate LinkedIn MAUs at 310 million (47% of members). This is relatively consistent with Boston-based Apptopia’s 2017 estimate of an active LinkedIn user base of around 250 million in 2017, representing 50% of its 500 million members at the time.
Snapchat is a multimedia mobile application which was created by Bobby Murphy, Evan Spiegel and Reggie Brown in 2011. Snapchat was introduced as an iOS-only app and called Picaboo.
It started as a private messaging app that gave users the ability to create “snaps” or messages that would self-destruct (be automatically deleted) after being viewed. Unlike all the other social media apps and networks in which you had to manually delete posts, you’ve shared.
For many, this was empowering because they didn’t have to worry about sending something that they’d regret years down the road.
For others, it just seemed like a breeding ground for sexting and “unscrupulous” behaviour that people wanted to hide.
When Snap, Inc. became a publicly-traded company, it decided to evolve into calling itself a “camera company.” Very few people understand that decision. However, since then it has had mixed fortunes and lost ground to Instagram.
Snap reported a net loss of $2.2 billion in Q1 of 2017. They lost nearly $40 million on unsold Spectacles they hastily manufactured without factoring in a matching demand.
Snapchat is regaining momentum and users as can be seen from the growth in daily active users.
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