A Census Of The World's Social Media Networks: Which Are The Biggest, And Where Do Their Users Come From?
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- Our census, which used a liberal definition of social networks, yields a few widely known but many surprising facts. Facebook still has the largest user population at 1.16 billion monthly active users.
- But it's seldom-discussed that YouTube is close behind with 1 billion MAUs.
- China's giant social media network, Qzone, is running in third place at 712 million total users. It's twice as large as global social messaging app WhatsApp, and nearly three times as large as Twitter.
- Three of the world's top 10 social properties are messaging platforms: WhatsApp, LINE, and WeChat.
- IPO-bound Twitter is smaller than many of its less-known rivals, including Tumblr, WhatsApp, and LINE.
- Social media professionals should understand not only how large each network is, but the countries of origin of the people who populate them. For example, 86% of Facebook's users are outside the United States.
- Facebook's new center of gravity is in emerging markets. Facebook has 95 million users in China (despite the fact that it's officially blocked), 68 million in India, 42 million in Brazil. Taking these population together, they're twice as large as Facebook's U.S. population of 100 million.
- Nearly 25% of LinkedIn's users are in India. In fact, there are more Indians than Americans on LinkedIn and Google+. Since India and the U.S. both have English as a principal language, there is bound to be a great deal of shared activity.
- Despite being blocked in China, the major social networks still have many millions of Chinese active users who use various stratagems to access these services. Google+ has 100 million users in China, Twitter has 80 million, and YouTube has 60 million.
- LinkedIn, the only major social network that is not blocked in China, has more than 20 million users in the country.
- Asia-Pacific overall has more active social media users than any region, and Southeast Asian markets such as Malaysia, Indonesia, and Vietnam are off the charts when it comes to mobile social media usage. Eighty-two percent of Thai smartphone owners access social media daily on their phones.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
In this report, we compare the world's largest social networks in two ways.
We first evaluate the world's largest social networks side-by-side in terms of total audience size.
That yields some surprises, such as the fact that YouTube ranks as the world's second-largest social network, that WhatsApp is bigger than Google+, and that China's Qzone is about the size of Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+ combined.
Then we analyze the markets where each has the most growth potential.
You might not be familiar with every major social network on our list, as some are active in just one country and closed off to the rest of the world (as is the case with social networks in China and Russia). Nonetheless, some of these closed-off social networks have an audience size that rivals that of Facebook, Google+, Twitter, and other popular mainstream social networks.
One of the most surprising facts unearthed in this research is that audiences in certaiun Southeast Asian countries like the Phillippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Malaysia are extremely active on social networks, particularly on mobile devices.
In aggregate, these markets present a huge opportunity for established social networks and mobile-first social apps.
We also identify the main developing and emerging markets where mainstream social networks will have the most growth potential.
LinkedIn still has plenty of runway for growth in Western Europe, while Facebook will see the most growth in Latin America and Asia.
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SOCIAL MEDIA GROWTH BY NETWORK
The World's Largest Social Media Networks (Ranked):
- Facebook (1.15 billion MAUs)
- YouTube (1 billion MAUs)
- Qzone (712 million total users)
- Sina Weibo (500 million total users)
- WhatsApp (350 million MAUs)
- Google+ (327 million MAUs)
- Tumblr (300 million MAUs)
- LINE (275 million total active users)
- Twitter (240 million MAUs)
- WeChat (236 million MAUs)
A close look at Facebook's own second quarter numbers shows how Asia, Africa, and Latin America are dominating growth:
- MAUs in North America accounted for 17% of total MAUs, and are growing at an average rate of 2% each quarter. North America, dominated by the U.S., made up 47% of Facebook's user base just five years ago.
- MAUs in Europe accounted for 24% of total MAUs, and are growing at an average rate of 3% each quarter.
- MAUs in Asia accounted for 29% of total MAUs, and are growing at an average rate of 8% each quarter.
- MAUs in all other regions, including Latin America and Africa, accounted for 30% of total MAUs and are growing at an average rate of 8% each quarter.
Although Facebook does not provide a breakdown of MAUs by country, we compiled data from various sources to get a sense of where Facebook's active users are located around the world:
- Fifty-six percent of Internet users in the U.S. are monthly active users on Facebook, according to a GlobalWebIndex survey of more than 16,000 people. Pew Internet Research says that 67% of Internet users in the U.S. use Facebook, though not necessarily every month. Putting Pew's number together with GlobalWebIndex's, we see that over 80% of Facebook's U.S. users are active monthly, an enviable level of engagement.
- Nearly 87 million Internet users from mainland China use Facebook, accounting for 8% of Facebook's entire global user base according to an ongoing multiyear survey by GlobalWebIndex. This is despite the Chinese government's ban on Facebook that dates to 2009. Facebook's official estimate (according to its advertising tool) pins its user base in China at 680,000. But surveys reveal that Facebook's number is an extremely conservative estimate at best.
Where are Facebook's main growth opportunities?
Approximately 55% of Facebook users in China rely on a proxy server to access the social network.
Despite being a blocked site, Facebook's user base in China is already the second largest of any country's, trailing only the U.S.'s.
However, with only 21% penetration into the Internet population in China, Facebook could easily add another 100 million users from China alone over the next few years. The problem, of course, is that Facebook will probably face an uphill battle monetizing these users.
Few advertisers, if any, will want to target a population that in theory is banned from using the network.
GOOGLE+
The importance of Google+ in the social media ecosystem is underestimated. Google has integrated Google+ with some of its most popular products and services, including Gmail, Google Search, and most recently, YouTube.
Collectively, Google sites make up one of the largest audiences on the Web. Because of this Google+'s user growth is intrinsically linked to the performance of other Google products! , as wel l as how Google positions the social network within its own ecosystem (e.g., organic content on Google+ ranks high on Google search results).
First, some numbers:
- There were 359 million MAUs in May 2013, up 33% from June 2012, according to GlobalWebIndex.
- There were 36 million MAUs in the U.S. on desktop computers alone during the month of May, a 62% increase from May 2012, according to comScore.
- Google reported in December 2012 that the social network had accumulated 500 million members (including non-active users).
What are the growth opportunities for Google+?
We are seeing room for user expansion in many well-developed Internet markets. For example, fewer than than 11% of Internet users in France, Germany, and the U.K. currently use Google+ on a monthly basis.
The North America region also shows promise. Canada ranks 20th in the world for Internet audience size, and according to the CIRA 2013 Factbook, Canadians spend more time online than anyone else in the world. Among online activities, Canadians spend more time with social media than any other type of content.
Despite this, only 13% of Canadian Internet users use Google+ on a monthly basis.
The U.S. is Google+'s third-largest market (behind China and India), and yet only 17% of the country's Internet users say they use Google+ on a monthly basis, according to a GlobalWebIndex survey.
Also, because Google+ is so popular on smartphones, we expect it to gain a lot of users in markets where there is a lot of smartphone usage. Google+ is the fourth most popular smartphone app globally, trailing only Google Maps, Facebook, and YouTube. Therefore, we see strong growth potential in several mobile-focused social media markets, including Spain, Singapore, and Japan.
We also anticipate continued growth in India and in mainland China, where Google+ is already more popular than Facebook and Twitter.
- LinkedIn had 60 million MAUs in the U.S. in June 2013; 29% were mobile users and 16% were mobile-only.
- There are more than 30 million students and recent college graduates who are members, and they represent LinkedIn's fastest-growing demographic. So while Facebook is getting older, LinkedIn is getting younger.
- Approximately 65% of LinkedIn members are located outside the U.S.
The U.S. is LinkedIn's single largest market, accounting for more than 84 million registered users, followed by India (21 million), and the U.. .and Brazil (both with 13 million).
What are LinkedIn's growth opportunities?
During LinkedIn's third quarter earnings conference call, CEO Jeff Weiner said that the company will have its "mobile moment in 2014," pointing to Turkey and Singapore as cases where 50% of LinkedIn's users access the site via smartphones and tablets.
We expect LinkedIn to accumulate large aggregate user growth across many Western markets, such as France and Germany.
LinkedIn has less than 5% penetration in China and Russia — two of the largest social media markets in the world — so there is a lot of headroom for growth there.
Given the professional nature of LinkedIn's content, it should see more user growth in financial centers, such as Singapore and Japan, where we have yet to see any significant penetration by the social network.
YOUTUBE
- In March, YouTube reported that it had surpassed 1 billion monthly active users — 40% of whom accesses the video social network via a mobile device.
- In the U.S., one in four Internet users accesses YouTube monthly.
- Seventy percent of YouTube traffic comes from outside the U.S.
What are YouTube's growth opportunities?
We expect YouTube to see growth in markets that have a high proliferation of premium mobile devices — smartphones and tablets. Thus, markets to watch for are parts of Western Europe, such as France, Germany, and Italy — all of which YouTube has 15% or less penetration in.
China is a particularly exciting market for YouTube, where it currently has 60 million MAUs, but only 13% penetration of the Internet population.
Also, the healthy high-end mobile device market in Japan should propel YouTube's growth in Asia.
Canadians watch more videos per user than any other country. YouTube currently has a stronghold on the online video market in Canada, accounting for half of all videos Canadians watch on the Web.
- Total monthly active users in the third quarter were up 6% from the previous quarter and 39% compared to the third quarter of 2012.
- But that's a deceleration from the second quarter, when MAUs had grown 7% over the previous quarter, and 44% year-over-year.
- An average 232 million people visited Twitter on a monthly basis.
- Twenty-three percent of those visitors were U.S.-based. Seventy-six percent accessed Twitter via a mobile device.
Twitter is adding new international users at a faster rate than U.S. users. International MAUs grew 41% year-over-year in the third quarter, compared to 33% in the U.S. Some of Twitter's top executives were recently re-assigned abroad to support the company's expansion into emerging markets.
What are the growth opportunities? According to Twitter's own forecasts, management expects user growth to come largely from Argentina, France, Japan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and South Africa.
However, we know that Twitter's user growth is tied closely to mobile growth, so we see enormous potential for the social network in Brazil, China, Vietnam, and India. These are markets where mobile audiences are heavy users of social media (e.g., 81% of Vietnamese smartphone owners access social media every day on their devices.)
Twitter management might be downplaying potential in these markets because of increased competition. In China, Tencent Weibo is more popular than Twitter, and their functionality is very similar. Elsewhere in Asia, mobile messaging apps, such as LINE and WeChat could be favored for their local roots in the region, and in speaking with management from those companies, we know they are expanding aggressively in Vietnam, Taiwan, Thailand, and other markets in Southeast Asia.
SOCIAL MEDIA GROWTH BY MARKET
The World's 10 Largest Social Media Markets (Ranked):
- China
- United States
- India
- Brazil
- Indonesia
- Russia
- Philippines
- Japan
- Mexico
- United Kingdom
On a global scale, PCs are still the primary means for how people access social media.
According to comScore measurements shared with BI Intelligence, 94% of Internet users age 15 and older in Latin America access social media on a PC.
This doesn't mean that they don't also access on mobile devices, but the high proportion reveals that PCs are far from irrelevant as a tool for accessing social networks.
Other world regions showed similar numbers: 87% in North America, 82% in Europe, 80% in Asia, and 71% in Africa and the Middle East.
Although social media activity remains low in the Middle East and Africa, it's also the region with the most headroom for user adoption.
However, going forward we expect social media user growth to be closely tied to mobile growth around the world.
A Nielsen study of more than 28,000 global consumers with Internet access found that among world regions, Asia-Pacific has been the quickest to adapt mobile social networking: Fifty-nine percent of audiences in that region use a mobile phone and 28% use a tablet to access social media.
However, data extracted f! rom Goog le's Our Mobile Planet site also shows strong social networking activity among smartphone owners in parts of South America and Western Europe, as well as Southeast Asia.
Let's take a closer look at Asia-Pacific, the largest and fastest-growing social media market.
ASIA-PACIFIC
Asia-Pacific (APAC) has more social media users than any other region. More than 500 million people in Asia access social media via a desktop computer, meaning that 80% of the region's Internet population are users of social media on PCs.
However, it is the popularity of mobile devices throughout APAC that represents the most significant growth potential for social media.
According to Cisco, APAC nations will account for 47% of worldwide mobile data traffic in 2017.
The top four mobile markets in the region — China, Japan, India, and South Korea — currently account for 60% of Asia's mobile connections.
Thirty percent of Facebook's users are located in Asia; however, Facebook is not the most popular social network in the region's top social media market — China.
CHINA
Information about social media usage in China is scarce, because of Internet censorship enforced by the ruling Communist Party of China.
McKinsey & Company pinned social media users in China at 300 million in 2012. This number did not include people who were accessing Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, because these sites are "banned," but many still find ways to access them.
It's estimated that nearly 87 million Internet users in mainland China access Facebook via proxy servers and other privacy hacks. Thus, approximately 8% of Facebook's entire global user base comes from China.
comScore reported in August 2013 that more than 300 million people in China accessed social media sites from PCs alone.
The most popular social networks in China, according to data provided by GlobalWebIndex, are those featuring local language and content.
- Sina Weibo, a China-based social network that is akin to a Facebook-Twitter hybrid, is being used by 62% of China's Internet population on a monthly basis.
- Qzone, a China-only social network is used by 53% of China's Internet population on a monthly basis.
- Tencent Weibo, a microblogging service that limits messages to 140 Chinese characters or fewer, is used by 51% of China's Internet population on a monthly basis.
Although local social networks dominate in China, Google+ is used by 23% of the country's Internet population on a monthly basis, making it the most popular social network in the country that doesn't have roots in China. Facebook is used by 21% of the country's Internet population on a monthly basis.
Social media activity in China is extremely fragmented by the many platform options. We simply do not see such high penetration rates for so many different social networks anywhere else in the world. There are nine different main language groups in China (including Chinese, Tibetan, Mongolian, etc.), and this seems to have accelerated fragmentation. The most widely spoken language in China is Mandarin. But there are also many variants and dialects of standard Chinese, which makes social media targeting extremely difficult.
Despite the large social media audience in China, the top social networks lack diversity in one sense: Five of the 10 largest social networks in the country are China-only social networks.
Brands and advertisers can achieve a much broader spectrum of consumers via open social networks, such as Facebook, Google+, and Twitter.
Other APAC nations enjoy a more cross-cultural experience on social networks.
Facebook is used by 55% of the Internet population in India on a monthly basis, followed by Google+ (35%), and YouTube (33%).
JAPAN
In Japan, Twitter and Facebook are the two most popular social networks, each being used by 22% of the Internet population on a monthly basis.
As a daily habit, s! ocial me dia usage on smartphones is among the highest in countries in Southeast Asia. According to Google's Mobile Planet site, 82% of Thailand's smartphone population uses social media daily on their smartphone.
We see a similar trend in Vietnam (81%), Indonesia (79%), Malaysia (70%), and the Philippines (63%).
Social networks with a strong mobile presence, such as Twitter, will benefit from this activity.
THE BOTTOM LINE
- Facebook still has the largest user population at 1.16 billion monthly active users.
- YouTube is close behind with 1 billion MAUs.
- Qzone is running in third place at 712 million total users. It's twice as large as global social messaging app WhatsApp and nearly three times as large as Twitter.
- Three of the world's top 10 social properties are messaging platforms: WhatsApp, LINE, and WeChat.
- IPO-bound Twitter is smaller than many of its less-known rivals, including Tumblr, WhatsApp, and LINE.
- Many of the Western world's social networks are increasingly international. For example, 86% of Facebook's users are outside the United States.
- Facebook is now as big in emerging markets as it is in the U.S. It has 68 million users in India, and 42 million in Brazil.
- Google+ and LinkedIn have more Indian users than Americans.
- Despite being blocked in China, the major social networks still have many millions of Chinese active users who use various hacks to gain access. LinkedIn, the only major social network that is not blocked in China, has more than 20 million users in the country.
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