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15 Most Popular Social Media Networks that will rule 2023


Abhinav Girdhar
By Abhinav Girdhar | Last Updated on December 1st, 2023 6:47 am | 5-min read
15 Most Popular Social Media Networks that will rule 2020

Social media has evolved from being just a casual platform to connect with friends and share pictures, to a powerful marketing tool that businesses can no longer ignore. Nowadays, social media sites are where it all happens. They provide an avenue for businesses to reach their target audience and connect with potential customers on a personal level.

As social media has become an integral part of people’s lives, it has also become an essential aspect of marketing strategies for businesses. Whether it’s through networking with like-minded professionals or engaging with customers on a personal level, social media channels are a vital component of any successful marketing plan.

In this blog, we’ll explore the most popular social media channels today, that are here to stay. Find out whether your favorite platform has made the cut in our most popular social media list and also explore our recommendations on the best online platform for your needs. Who knows, you may even find inspiration to create your own social media website!

  1. Facebook – Active Monthly Users: 2.37 billion
  2. YouTube – Active Monthly Users: 2 billion
  3. WhatsApp – Active Monthly Users: 1.5 billion
  4. Messenger – Active Monthly Users: 1.3 billion
  5. Instagram – Active Monthly Users: 1 billion
  6. WeChat – Active Monthly Users: 1 billion
  7. Qzone –  Active Monthly Users: 572 million
  8. Tumblr – Active Monthly Users: 371 million
  9. Twitter – Active Monthly Users: 330 million
  10. Reddit – Active Monthly Users: 330 million
  11. LinkedIn – Active Monthly Users: 303 million
  12. Snapchat – Active Monthly Users: 301 million
  13. Skype – Active Monthly Users: 300 million
  14. Pinterest – Active Monthly Users: 291 million
  15. Line – Active Monthly Users: 217 million

15 Most Popular Social Media Networks that will rule 2020

#1. Facebook

Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg

Facebook can be termed as the largest and top social networking platform in the world. It is the most widely used and was perhaps the first that surpassed the landmark of 1 billion user accounts. Apart from networking with friends and relatives, you can even promote your business, brand and products by on Facebook.

Over 65 million businesses are using Facebook pages and more than six million advertisers are actively promoting their business on Facebook. The average amount of time a user spends on Facebook every day is 58 minutes.

#2. YouTube

Founded in 2005 by three former PayPal employees Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim.

YouTube is the most popular video-sharing social networking site that enables users to upload and share videos, view them, comment on them and like them. This social networking platform is accessible across the globe and it enables users to create a YouTube channel where they can upload all their personally recorded videos to showcase to friends and followers.

On an average, 300 hours of videos are uploaded every minute on YouTube social media. The average duration of a YouTube visit by a visitor is about 40 minutes. Viewers spend an average of 1 hour per day watching YouTube videos.

As an entrepreneur you can give YouTube a run for their money by creating a video streaming app of your own. The trick is to find the gaps in the platform that you can fill.

#3. WhatsApp

Founded in 2009 by Brian Acton and Jan Koum, former Yahoo! Employees

WhatsApp even after being acquired by Facebook in 2014, exists as an independent entity. Users who sign up with a standard mobile phone number are able to communicate with one another through text messages, voice calls, video calls, and by sending videos and images.

On average, 1 million people register on WhatsApp daily. Approximately 60 billion texts daily are sent using the app.

#4. Messenger

Based off of Facebook Chat the message platform was revamped and released in August 2011 by Mark Zuckerberg

Facebook Messenger is a standalone app by itself and significantly expanded on its features. Facebook Messenger users can now send messages, exchange photos, videos, and other files, as well as react to messages with emoticons and stickers. Messenger can be used for group chats or one-to-one communication and calling. Businesses can also take advantage of Facebook Messenger by advertising, creating chatbots, sending newsletters.

Over 20 billion messages are sent between people and businesses every month. Messenger is the second most popular iOS app of all time. Over 1.3 billion people use Facebook Messenger each month.

Just because these instant messaging apps have been around for a long time, does not mean that they are flawless. Have you noticed a frustrating gap in expectations on it? Make an instant messaging app of your own and offer something unique to your app users!

#5. Instagram

Here is some interesting information on most popular social media platforms

Founded in 2010 by Founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger

Instagram was launched as a unique social networking platform to connect with friends. It was entirely based on sharing photos and videos. This photo sharing social networking app thus enables you to capture the best moments of your life, with your phone’s camera or any other camera, and convert them into works of art.

On an average, 95 million photos are uploaded daily on Instagram, many of which are improved with the help of Instagram Photoshop actions. Since its creation, more than 40 billion photos have been shared on the platform. There are approximately 4.2 billion likes per day on Instagram.

#6. WeChat

Founded by Zhang Xiaolong; Developed by Tencent Holdings Limited in 2010

WeChat is a popular social app in China. It’s an all-in-one communication app for messaging and calling. Somewhat similar to WhatsApp, it helps you to connect with all your contacts. It is amongst one of the top social media apps on Play store and IOS.

WeChat is the fifth most-used app in the world. Over 250,000 users use WeChat to access bus/metro services every minute during the morning rush hour. Over 83 percent of WeChat users use the general app for work.

#7. Qzone

Founded by Ma Huateng in 2005

QZone is a China-based social networking platform where users can write blogs, send photos, listen to music, and more. This social media platform helps you in sharing photos, watching videos, listening to songs, writing blogs and maintaining diaries. It also empowers you to choose the accessories and customize the look and feel of your QZone webpages. Qzone is of one of the most active communities in the whole industry. Qzone has transformed to the biggest social network open platform.

User can create almost up to 1000 albums in QZone and each album has the capacity to hold 10000 photos. They can add games from Application Center to their homepage, and even play with friends in Qzone.

#8. Tumblr

Founded by David Karp in 2007

Tumblr, especially popular among teens and young adults, is a microblogging platform that allows users to post text, photos, links, videos, and more. The platform gives you the flexibility to customize almost everything. In its 12 years Tumblr has gone through many evolutions, acquisitions, and changes.

Tumblr has more than 166 billion published posts. There are approximately 7.2 million new blogs created each month on Tumblr.

#9. Twitter

Founded by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone, Evan Williams in the year 2006

Twitter is a social networking plan where users can post and interact with 280-character messages known as Tweets. The service is available as a mobile app and a desktop version. Since its inception, it’s grown to much more than a social networking platform and, today, it is a relevant online news source. Users can have a facility to accompany their tweets with images, videos, gifs, and hyperlinks. Twitter also helps to promote your businesses or even shop directly through the tweets.

About close to 460,000 new twitter accounts are registered every day. Almost 460,000 new twitter accounts are registered every day. Each twitter user has on an average 208 followers.

#10. Reddit

Founded by Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman in 2005

Reddit is an online community and social networking platform that enables users to submit links, create content, and discuss the topics of their interest with other like-minded individuals. It was acquired by mass media company Condé Nast in October 2006. This social media platform enables you to submit content and later also vote for the content.

It is estimated that Reddit gets over 14 billion views per month. With over 138,000 active communities on average, there are 25 million votes on Reddit daily.

#11. LinkedIn

Founded in 2002, launched in 2003 by Reid Hoffman, Konstantin Guericke, Jean-Luc Valliant, Allen Blue, and Eric Ly

LinkedIn is a social networking platform specifically geared toward the business community. It is predominantly used for professional networking, including employers posting jobs and job seekers posting their resumes. LinkedIn with its professional nature of the network has grown its user base over the years.

LinkedIn has over 560 million registered users. Over 5.3 million new accounts are created on LinkedIn per month. The average visit duration on this platform is about 10 minutes.

#12. Snapchat

Founded by Bobby Murphy, Evan Spiegel, Reggie Brown in 2011

The social media app Snapchat focuses on sharing photos and short videos between friends. It further allows you to explore news and even check out live stories that are happening around the world. Snapchat has seen its share of updates over the years. While the primary focus was on one-to-one messaging, users now can post a Snapchat Story that will appear on their profile for 24 hours. Snapchat also introduced Snapchat filters or lenses, which add special effects to an image or video.

Snapchat has 109 million daily active users. Approximately 3 billion snaps are created every day on the platform.

#13. Skype

Founded by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis in 2003

Skype is owned by Microsoft. It is one of the most popular communication-based networking platforms. It allows you to connect with people anywhere in the world via voice calls, video calls and text messaging for free. Even conference calling is possible on Skype.

Statistics show that every day, about 3 billion minutes are spent on Skype. Till date, 2 trillion minutes have been used on Skype video calls. There have been 100 million Skype Android installations.

#14. Pinterest

Founded by Paul Sciarra Ben Silbermann and Evan Sharp in 2010

Pinterest is a free social networking platform. It enables registered users to share and collect pieces of multimedia and save them to a virtual bulletin board, often devoted to a specific topic, such as cooking, crafting, or music. It can actually be called a photo sharing and visual bookmarking social media site. A Pinterest user is inspired to try out new things, thus having a presence on Pinterest could help put your brand on their minds.

The total number of Pinterest pins is actually more than 175 billion. In a single day, Pinterest is visited by 2 million users who save shopping pins on their boards.

#15. Line

Developed by Naver Corporation in 2000

Line, a Japan-based freeware app, is globally available messaging social network that enables you to share photos, videos, text messages and even audio messages or files. Any brands can create an official account on Line to share news and promotions, which will appear on their followers’ timeline.

LINE ranks among the highest-grossing mobile gaming app publishers. It has generated 22 million dollars in mobile gaming revenues. Line ranked among most popular mobile messenger apps based in Asia 2019.

Conclusion

Social media sites are here to stay. They have a strong role to play in marketing for businesses. There are different categories of social media channels and each of them have clear target markets and niches they cater to.

The social media platform you choose to target, must be in sync with your target audience. If you are serving premium luxury goods, Snapchat or Reddit may not be the perfect platforms for you to work on.

In fact, you may want to carve out your own niche, by making your own social media app, which is tailor made to your target customers’ preferences.

Do you agree with the list we put together for you? Is there a social network, you think, doesn’t belong on this list, or did we miss out on one? Let us know in the comments section, I’d love to hear from you!

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Abhinav Girdhar

Founder and CEO of Appy Pie

App Builder

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