Technology
Ranked: The World’s Most Popular Social Networks, and Who Owns Them
The World’s Most Popular Social Networks, and Who Owns Them
Currently, there are over 4.5 billion people around the world who use some form of social media—about 57% of the global population.
Yet, while social media’s audience is widespread and diverse, just a handful of companies control a majority of the world’s most popular social media platforms. Meta, the tech giant formerly known as Facebook, owns four of the five most widely used platforms.
This graphic highlights the biggest social networks across the globe, measured by their monthly active users (MAUs).
Note: We’ll be using terms like “social network” and “social platform” interchangeably to refer to various messaging, video, and image-sharing platforms that have social attributes built in.
Top Social Platforms by Monthly Active Users
To measure each platform’s MAUs, we dug into various sources, including the most recent company SEC filings, and quarterly earnings reports.
A majority of Meta’s user base comes from its most popular platform, Facebook—the social media giant currently has around 2.9 billion MAUs worldwide.
Rank | Platform name | Parent company | Country | Monthly active users, in millions |
---|---|---|---|---|
#1 | Meta | 🇺🇸 U.S. | 2,910 | |
#2 | YouTube | Alphabet | 🇺🇸 U.S. | 2,291 |
#3 | Meta | 🇺🇸 U.S. | 2,000 | |
#4 | Messenger | Meta | 🇺🇸 U.S. | 1,300 |
#5 | Meta | 🇺🇸 U.S. | 1,287 | |
#6 | Tencent | 🇨🇳 China | 1,225 | |
#7 | Kuaishou | Kuaishou | 🇨🇳 China | 1,000 |
#8 | TikTok | Bytedance | 🇨🇳 China | 1,000 |
#9 | Telegram | Telegram | 🇦🇪 UAE | 600 |
#10 | Qzone | Tencent | 🇨🇳 China | 600 |
#11 | Tencent | 🇨🇳 China | 591 | |
#12 | Sina | 🇨🇳 China | 566 | |
#13 | Douyin | Bytedance | 🇨🇳 China | 550 |
#14 | Snapchat | Snap | 🇺🇸 U.S. | 538 |
#15 | 🇺🇸 U.S. | 463 | ||
#16 | 🇺🇸 U.S. | 454 | ||
#17 | 🇺🇸 U.S. | 430 | ||
#18 | Microsoft | 🇺🇸 U.S. | 310 | |
#19 | Quora | Quora | 🇺🇸 U.S. | 300 |
#20 | Skype | Microsoft | 🇺🇸 U.S. | 300 |
#21 | Tieba | Baidu | 🇨🇳 China | 300 |
#22 | Viber | Rakuten | 🇯🇵 Japan | 250 |
#23 | Teams | Microsoft | 🇺🇸 U.S. | 250 |
#24 | imo | PageBites | 🇺🇸 U.S. | 212 |
#25 | Line | Naver | 🇰🇷 South Korea | 169 |
#26 | Picsart | Picsart | 🇺🇸 U.S. | 150 |
#27 | Likee | Bigo Live | 🇸🇬 Singapore | 150 |
#28 | Discord | Discord | 🇺🇸 U.S. | 140 |
Where in the world are Facebook users located? The platform’s biggest user base comes from India, with an audience size of almost 350 million. Its second-largest user base is the United States, with 193.9 million users, while Indonesia comes in third with 142.5 million.
But Facebook isn’t the only social giant in Meta’s network of platforms. WhatsApp has approximately 2 billion MAUs, making it Meta’s second-largest platform, and the third-largest social network overall.
Like Facebook, a significant number of WhatsApp users are located in India, with roughly 390 million users. Brazil has a large portion of WhatsApp users as well, with an audience size of 108 million.
The Billion Users Club
Meta currently dominates the social network landscape, with a combined total of 7.5 billion MAUs across all four of its platforms. However, a few other companies also hit the one billion MAU mark across all their platforms on the list:
Rank | Parent company | # of companies on the list | Country | Combined MUAs |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Meta | 4 | 🇺🇸 U.S. | 7.5 billion |
2 | Tencent | 3 | 🇨🇳 China | 2.4 billion |
3 | Alphabet | 1 | 🇺🇸 U.S. | 2.3 billion |
4 | Bytedance | 2 | 🇨🇳 China | 1.6 billion |
5 | Kuaishou | 1 | 🇨🇳 China | 1 billion |
After Meta, Tencent has the second-highest reach thanks to its three platforms—WeChat, Qzone, and QQ. Of the three, WeChat is currently the most popular. On average, WeChat users send about 45 billion messages a day.
Third on the list is Alphabet, thanks to its one platform, YouTube. Founded in 2005, this video streaming platform currently has over 50 million content creators, who share approximately 500 hours of video content every minute.
Close behind Alphabet is Bytedance, with a combined 1.6 billion MAUs across its two platforms—Douyin and its international counterpart TikTok. While the apps share a lot of similarities, they function as completely separate entities, with different registration, content policies, and regulations.
Global Social Networks? Not Always
While social media networks often transcend country borders, it’s worth noting that the online realm does not completely escape the constraints and regulations of our physical world.
Since 2009, Facebook has been banned in China for not complying with censorship rules. Facebook was also blocked in Iran and Syria around the same time and has been blocked sporadically since.
In 2020, the Trump administration tried to enact a similar ban against TikTok, but the order was blocked by a federal judge and eventually revoked by the Biden administration a year later.
Despite various bans and roadblocks, it’s clear that social media platforms have seeped into the lives (and onto the screens) of users across the globe. And as internet access worldwide continues to grow, so too will the number of social media users.
Technology
Countries With the Highest Rates of Crypto Ownership
While the U.S. is a major market for cryptocurrencies, two countries surpass it in terms of their rates of crypto ownership.
Countries With the Highest Rates of Crypto Ownership
This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.
This graphic ranks the top 10 countries by their rate of cryptocurrency ownership, which is the percentage of the population that owns crypto. These figures come from crypto payment gateway, Triple-A, and are as of 2023.
Data and Highlights
The table below lists the rates of crypto ownership in the top 10 countries, as well as the number of people this amounts to.
Country | % of Population Who Own Crypto | # of Crypto Owners |
---|---|---|
🇦🇪 United Arab Emirates | 30.4 | 3M |
🇻🇳 Vietnam | 21.2 | 21M |
🇺🇸 U.S. | 15.6 | 53M |
🇮🇷 Iran | 13.5 | 12M |
🇵🇠Philippines | 13.4 | 16M |
🇧🇷 Brazil | 12 | 26M |
🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia | 11.4 | 4M |
🇸🇬 Singapore | 11.1 | 665K |
🇺🇦 Ukraine | 10.6 | 4M |
🇻🇪 Venezuela | 10.3 | 3M |
Note that if we were to rank countries based on their actual number of crypto owners, India would rank first at 93 million people, China would rank second at 59 million people, and the U.S. would rank third at 52 million people.
The UAE Takes the Top Spot
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) boasts the highest rates of crypto ownership globally. The country’s government is considered to be very crypto friendly, as described in Henley & Partners’ Crypto Wealth Report 2023:
In the UAE, the Financial Services Regulatory Authority (FSRA-ADGM) was the first to provide rules and regulations regarding cryptocurrency purchasing and selling. The Emirates are generally very open to new technologies and have proposed zero taxes for crypto owners and businesses.
Vietnam leads Southeast Asia
According to the Crypto Council for Innovation, cryptocurrency holdings in Vietnam are also untaxed, making them an attractive asset.
Another reason for Vietnam’s high rates of ownership could be its large unbanked population (people without access to financial services). Cryptocurrencies may provide an alternative means of accessing these services without relying on traditional banks.
Learn More About Crypto From Visual Capitalist
If you enjoyed this post, be sure to check out The World’s Largest Corporate Holders of Bitcoin, which ranks the top 12 publicly traded companies by their Bitcoin holdings.
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