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
Ranked: The Top Startup Cities Around the World
Here are the global startup ecosystem rankings, highlighting the scale and maturity of major tech hubs worldwide.
The Top Startup Cities Around the World
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.
A richly connected network of founders, venture capital firms, and tech talent are some of the key ingredients driving a startup ecosystem.
As engines of growth, these tech clusters are evolving on a global scale. While the world’s leading startup cities are concentrated in America, several ecosystems, such as Beijing and Seoul, are growing in prominence as countries focus on technological advancement to spur innovation.
This graphic shows the best startup cities worldwide, based on data from Pitchbook.
The Global Startup Ecosystem Rankings
To determine the rankings, each city was analyzed based on the scale and maturity of their startup ecosystem over a six-year period ending in the second quarter of 2023.
Among the inputs analyzed and used to calculate the overall development score were fundraising activity, venture capital deals, and exit value:
Rank | City | Development Score | Capital Raised | Deal Count | Exit Value |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 🇺🇸 San Francisco | 90 | $427.6B | 19,898 | $766.3B |
2 | 🇺🇸 New York | 76 | $179.9B | 13,594 | $171.7B |
3 | 🇨🇳 Beijing | 76 | $161.2B | 8,835 | $279.2B |
4 | 🇨🇳 Shanghai | 73 | $130.3B | 7,422 | $186.8B |
5 | 🇺🇸 Los Angeles | 71 | $144.6B | 9,781 | $181.4B |
6 | 🇺🇸 Boston | 70 | $117.0B | 6,044 | $172.8B |
7 | 🇬🇧 London | 64 | $99.0B | 11,533 | $71.9B |
8 | 🇨🇳 Shenzhen | 63 | $46.4B | 5,020 | $66.3B |
9 | 🇰🇷 Seoul | 61 | $31.1B | 6,196 | $71.0B |
10 | 🇯🇵 Tokyo | 60 | $26.2B | 5,590 | $28.0B |
11 | 🇨🇳 Hangzhou | 59 | $50.7B | 3,361 | $88.7B |
12 | 🇺🇸 Washington D.C. | 55 | $43.7B | 2,706 | $28.2B |
13 | 🇺🇸 Seattle | 54 | $31.7B | 2,693 | $35.6B |
14 | 🇸🇬 Singapore | 52 | $45.7B | 4,507 | $38.0B |
15 | 🇺🇸 San Diego | 52 | $33.5B | 2,023 | $44.7B |
16 | 🇺🇸 Austin | 52 | $26.4B | 2,636 | $22.9B |
17 | 🇨🇳 Guangzhou | 52 | $24.7B | 1,700 | $24.0B |
18 | 🇮🇱 Tel Aviv | 51 | $21.0B | 1,936 | $32.2B |
19 | 🇺🇸 Denver | 51 | $26.8B | 2,489 | $29.9B |
20 | 🇩🇪 Berlin | 50 | $31.2B | 2,469 | $15.9B |
San Francisco dominates the pack, with $427.6 billion in capital raised over the six-year period.
Despite a challenging funding environment, nearly 20,000 deals closed, highlighting its outsized role in launching tech startups. Both OpenAI and rival Anthropic are headquartered in the city, thanks to its broad pool of tech talent and venture capital firms. Overall, 11,812 startups were based in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2023, equal to about 20% of startups in America.
Falling next in line is New York City, which raised $179.9 billion over the same time period. Crypto firm Gemini and machine learning company, Hugging Face, are two examples of startups based in the city.
As the top-ranking hub outside of America, Beijing is home to TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, which is one of the most valuable private companies in the world.
In recent years, much of the startup funding in China is being driven by government-backed funds. In particular, these funds are focusing heavily on “hard tech” such as semiconductor-makers and electric vehicle companies that align with the government’s strategic long-term goals.
Another leading tech hub, Singapore, has the highest venture capital funding per capita worldwide. In 2023, this was equal to an impressive $1,060 in venture funding per person. By comparison, venture funding was $345 per person in the U.S., the second-highest globally.
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