Social media platforms are the order of the day. Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp, YouTube, Instagram, and so many other names come. We are about to talk about social media.
We used to scroll or hover the mouse over social media newsfeed all day long, except the time we were asleep. Social media offers a lot of things and so, we communicate with friends and families, watch music and funny videos, share personal photos, show personal talents, and so on.
Above all, social media has become commonplace for businesses to increase brand identity, expand consumer base, and direct communication with prospects no matter where they are.
According to the huge demand for social media, it is also used for so many other purposes. Consequently, the number of social media users is also increasing day by day. They are featured in various aspects, for instance, Twitter is a microblogging platform, Instagram is an image-based social media platform and WhatsApp allows only messaging.
If you have already got a massive experience of using different types of social media platforms, then you are super active. And if you don’t, you should at least give them a try.
In this article, we are going to talk about the top 10 social media platforms’ market shares in 2021. Besides, we will give a clear idea about the total user and other interesting statistics of these social media platforms to make sense. Here we go to dig out the topic below.
Contents
As we learn above, there are so many social media platforms available right now. If you are interested in having a specific number of them, you cannot end up. Because some social media platforms are only available in specific regions, so you may not even know about them.
Although that’s not our cup of tea. Because people love to talk about popular social media platforms no matter how many of them are available. Moreover, people aren’t as interested in other social media platforms as they are in Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, WhatsApp, etc.
So, what are the top 10 social media platforms right now? Well, before showing you the list, it is important to know that there are different metrics that are responsible for making a difference in the list.
To put it simply, if we take monthly active users (MAU) into account, the top 10 list we will get will differ if we count revenue, market share, or any other criteria.
It may seem complicated to you and so, we create a list of the top 10 social media platforms on average. Which means, no matter about different criteria, this list will give you a clear ranking sense of the current social media market share.
- YouTube
- TikTok
- Snapchat
Now let’s move on to see what makes the difference between those social platforms’ market share.
Facebook – 53.34%
Whatever criteria you consider to evaluate social media platforms’ market share, you can see Facebook always at the top of the list. Facebook is dominating over all other social media platforms in terms of active users, most spend time daily, marketer’s investment, and all in all.
The rapid growth of Facebook has made it popular all over the world. Currently, it has 2.7 billion monthly active users which is undoubtedly the most among the other competitors. It is one of the world’s most valuable companies and considered one of the Big Five companies in the U.S.
Facebook launched in February 2004. So, the journey wasn’t so easy to reach the top and become the number one social media platform. As a social media platform, Facebook includes all the things in it like messages, shares, reactions, and followers, and allows users to create groups and pages for brand awareness, and advertising.
Because of the massive user engagement, Facebook has become the most focusing platform for marketers as they can easily get followers and potential consumers who are intended to consume products and services.
There are numerous images and video content that are enough to entertain you all day until you don’t get tired by scrolling. Therefore, whether you are a regular user or you have got some other purpose for using social media, Facebook should be at the top of your priority list.
YouTube – 8.49%
There is no need to introduce you to YouTube. If you are an online user, you are already using it as one of your favorite online platforms. However, YouTube is a video-sharing platform that only allows videos to engage viewers.
Currently, it has over 2 billion monthly active users and 30 million daily users. You can consider YouTube as a storehouse of all the necessary videos you may need in your daily life. This is why it occupies 1 billion hours of daily watch in videos.
We use YouTube to find simple life hack solutions to listen to music videos, watch movies, software and hardware solutions, product review, learning lessons, educational videos, and what you need. In every single minute, 500 hours of video uploading on this platform.
YouTube marketing is the most practiced marketing strategy for online sellers after Facebook. Since reading long-form articles is sometimes irritative, people are now more likely to watch videos to find any their problem solutions.
Thus, YouTube makes it super easy to find all the necessary things on one platform. You just need to make a search to get whatever you need on YouTube. Its current revenue is worth $19.8 billion which makes YouTube second in the list of total market share worldwide.
Instagram – 4.27%
Instagram is an image and video-sharing social media platform. It includes lots of interactive features such as story, timeline photo share, messaging, hashtags, explore, IGTV and the most distinct one is Photographic filters.
Instagram camera and built in image filters are arguably the smartest feature according to the people. However, Instagram was developed by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger. But it was taken by Facebook in 2012 for $1 billion.
Instagram is now one of the top five social media platforms. It holds almost 4.27% market share. With 1.16 billion monthly active users worldwide, Instagram provides the highest opportunity to B2B businesses, influencers, and marketers.
Businesses can easily connect with huge audiences organically or if they want, they can implement paid advertising strategies. Instagram generated $20 billion in ad revenue in 2020.
As of June 2021, the most followed person is Portuguese professional footballer Cristiano Ronaldo with over 300 million followers. The most followed woman is American singer Ariana Grande.
TikTok – 7.5%
TikTok is the successor of Musical.ly. It is a short video-sharing platform developed by the Chinese social networking service ByteDance. Hands down, TikTok is one of the most influential social media applications nowadays.
It was released in 2016 and just after one year of its release, it has become the most growing platform in 2021, it is ranked as the third fastest-growing brand, after only Zoom and Peacock.
Although, it is forced to be banned in countries like the US and India because of the massive impact on teenagers and even younger. As of January 2021, TikTok has 689 million monthly active users and users spend an average of 52 minutes per day on the app.
The reason behind such growth of TikTok is, it makes short video creation flexible and interesting. Features included allows users to add background music from a wide variety of music genres, edit with a filter and record a 15-second video with speed adjustments before uploading it to share with others on TikTok or other social platforms.
Same as other social media platforms, TikTok comes to the marketer’s eye and is used to campaign business goals and purposes widely. Businesses are now using it to advertise their product and can reach the audience across the world.
Besides, TikTok allows influencer marketing and encourages influencers to create popular viral content for promoting purposes.
Whatsapp – 4.02%
There are so many instant messaging applications available in the current social media scenario such as Facebook Messenger, Viber, Line, Wechat, etc. But WhatsApp makes a distinguished place with the most active users and becomes one of the top three social media platforms in the current social media market share.
WhatsApp has the highest market share 44% of the instant messaging platforms’ market share. it has almost 2 billion monthly active users around the globe which is so far from other instant messaging applications.
approximately 100 billion messages are sent every day using WhatsApp. It is an easy-to-use interface and flexible messaging that makes users feel comfortable communicating with everyone using WhatsApp.
Not only messaging, WhatsApp enables sharing of media files, videos, and images between users, and also it has great advantages for businesses. there are more than 5 million businesses leveraging WhatsApp for marketing, online customer care, support, confirming orders, and so on.
Especially for small businesses, WhatsApp is a helpful tool. because it has ‘Whatsapp business’ features quick replies, labels, chat filters, and more.
so, if you are an individual user who needs an instant messaging app to stay connected with family and friends or you are a business, WhatsApp can be a good option for your purpose.
Snapchat – 3.27%
Snapchat is another image-sharing social media platform slightly similar to Instagram. But they aren’t the same although both of them have a separate user base in every country across the world.
Snapchat is mostly familiar between teens and young. As its built-in camera option allows users to use huge funny, moody, and different types of filters and effects, they love to take pictures with a Snapchat camera.
Besides, users can share images in their story if they want which will disappear after 24 hours. Users can add friends via username and phone contacts and send person-to-person messages which also disappear after the recipient reads the message.
It includes a snap map that will show your friend’s location on a map and the ‘Discover’ feature will show you relevant advertising content in which you have an interest
As of the first Q of 2021, Snapchat has over 280 million users around the globe. Among them, the U.S has the most Snapchat users, approximately 108 million. 69% of US teens say that they have installed and use Snapchat on a regular basis.
Snapchat allows businesses to use the platform for business and marketing purposes. The ‘discover’ option lets brands show ad-supported short-form content to the users. By 2020, there will be 35 million businesses listed on the snap map.
Pinterest – 7.31%
Pinterest is an image-sharing social media platform that doesn’t include any messaging option. You can find only visual content like images, illustrations, motions, animation, 3D, GIF, and all-around images. And the good news is, you can find what you need through the search option.
Images are known as pins and users are called pinners. Pinterest acquires huge familiarity because it has the largest image-based server where you can find all types of images you need.
Thus it has over 450 million monthly active users among them, more than 60% are women. Women are more likely to spend time seeing pins of home decors, kitchen items, and such related products. And you may hear that 80% of US moms are on Pinterest.
Pinterest is a platform with great opportunities for online retailers and marketers. They can use it to drive traffic on their eCommerce site, get direct sales on their product, and make engagement with lots of interested persons.
Twitter – 6.04%
Twitter is the most popular microblogging platform as well as one of the top ten social networking platforms at present. Twitter is the platform for busy people who don’t have enough time to read broad articles or watch videos like Facebook and Instagram.
Twitter allows users to share tweets within 280 characters. Users can include images with their tweets but there is a limitation to using images on tweets. Besides sharing what’s going on in users’ minds as tweets, it enables follower options, hashtags, usernames, retweets, replies, trending topics, and so on.
The first-ever tweet published on March 21, 2006, by the Twitter founder Jack Dorsey said, “just setting up my twttr,”. It has been sold for the equivalent of $2.9 million to a Malaysian businessman Sina Estavi.
However, Twitter has over 353 million monthly active users and 192 million daily active users. 63% of them are between 35 to 65. As of 5 June 2021, Barack Obama is at the top of the most Twitter followers and the second position goes to Justin Bieber.
LinkedIn – 5.32%
LinkedIn is the platform commonly known as a professional networking platform where job seekers come to find jobs and employers post job vacancies in search of skillful employees for their company. At present, LinkedIn provides more options than just making job opportunities.
LinkedIn users can create a particular profile through which they can update personal status such as posting long-form content, sharing images and videos, and showing skill assets. Users can follow and connect with popular companies and persons and communicate with them via message.
Besides, LinkedIn now provides skill development courses on various topics and includes certificates that users can show on their profiles.
As of June 2021, LinkedIn had 756 million registered members from 200 countries and territories. With such activities on this platform, LinkedIn has become a place for marketers to lead generation and customer acquisition.
It has proved that LinkedIn is 277% more effective than Facebook in generating leads. Statistics show that 65% of B2B companies have used LinkedIn paid ads to acquire customers and 95% of B2B content marketers use LinkedIn for organic content marketing.
Reddit – 0.44%
Reddit is a distinguished social media platform that is growing tremendously and the day isn’t so far when it will compete with Facebook. It is a platform that offers multiple things as you can say it as a social news aggregation, online discussion forum, and also people use it to rate web content.
95% of people who are active in social media have known about Reddit and more than 50% of them are directly connected with Reddit. Reddit’s functionalities are almost different from other social media platforms.
Unlike Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter where users post content in their own profiles, Reddit isn’t a user profile-centric platform. It works through the community where users can submit content such as links, text posts, images, and videos, which are then voted up or down by other members.
Communities are known as subreddit here, which can be a cover topic like news, politics, religion, science, movies, video games, music, books, sports, fitness, cooking, pets, and image-sharing.
However, Reddit has 52 million daily active users worldwide and users spend on average 10 minutes 23 seconds per visit on the site. The United States has more users on this platform and 22% of them are aged 18 to 29.
Finally, the above list of social media is created based on the market share of these platforms. Whether you are an individual user or you have other intentions to use social media, you should consider these top 10 social media platforms.