Biggest Social Media Platforms By Users 2025

Bringing people together in a community can nurture a sense of belonging and foster loyalty. Diego Asturias is a tech journalist who translates complex tech jargon into engaging content. He has a degree in Internetworking Tech from Washington DC, US, and tech certifications from Cisco, McAfee, and Wireshark. He has hands-on experience working in Latin America, South Korea, and West Africa. He has been featured in SiliconANGLE Media, Cloudbric, Pcwdld, Hackernoon, ITT Systems, SecurityGladiators, Rapidseedbox, and more. Line dominates messaging in different parts of Asia, including Japan, Taiwan, and Thailand.

WhatsApp’s end-to-end encryption and no-algorithm feed make it ideal for direct communication, not discovery. But when used well, it builds trust and loyalty with your target audience. As an advertiser, it’s still one of the most reliable places to reach a broad audience. Start by figuring out where your people actually spend time online. From familiar giants like Facebook and Instagram to rising players like Threads and Bluesky, this list will help you make smarter decisions about where to show up and what kind of content to create.

Impressively, the social platform earned a revenue of $1.34 billion in Q alone, a 9% increase year-over-year. If a younger audience is your target, Snapchat might be worth considering. The platform is a great place for connecting with Millennials and Gen Z users.

Find more publications related to internet and technology and more benchmarks from our National Public Opinion Reference Survey (NPORS). All visualizations, data, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

For brands and creators targeting the Chinese market, Douyin offers a highly engaged, transaction-friendly audience and a glimpse into the future of video-led commerce. Reddit isn’t about polished content — it’s about showing up with value. That makes it ideal for brands and creators who want to listen before posting and engage with communities thoughtfully. Pinterest is a visual discovery platform for people to pin (save) images, videos, and GIFs to virtual pin boards.

You can use a broadcast channel to create a sense of exclusivity. For example, you could create a discount coupon for your broadcast audience or offer them early access to a sale. Events can boost brand awareness and spread the word about your products or services. Make the most of that enormous reach by creating ad campaigns for specific objectives. Like increasing sales, building awareness, driving engagement, and more.

Audiences are comfortable with AI as a tool, not a replacement for creativity. This report breaks down 18 shifts reshaping discovery, trust, and culture. In February 2026, Google.com was the most visited website worldwide, with 88.46 billion visits.

Today, Facebook operates under the umbrella of Meta, Inc., which also owns platforms like Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads. Our mission is to provide accurate data and expert insights on emerging trends. Unless otherwise noted, this page’s content was written by either an employee or a paid contractor of Semrush Inc. All traffic data is estimated based on the most recent available data. Using the wrong image size can lead to cropping, compression, or empty space around your visuals.

This platform is a good example of how global social media trends adapt (even after bans) to specific regional markets and languages. Viber is quite popular in regions like Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Asia. This social media platform offers messaging services with unique features like extensive sticker collections and public accounts for businesses and media outlets. Reddit (the heart of the Internet) is a vast collection of interest-based communities where users share content, ask questions, have heated conversations, and engage in discussions. The platform’s voting system and comment threading create unique content discovery that differs from traditional social networks. YouTube continues to hold the crown as the dominant original video social media platform.

Foreign companies pay up to $2,000 USD registering for an official account. If your audience is not in China, or they’re older and have a higher income, then you’re better off with WeChat. Also, the United States potentially banning TikTok due to data concerns has been a popular topic since 2020, so if privacy is a chief concern of yours, keep this in mind. Owned by Tencent, the parent company of QQ and QZone, this app does a little bit of everything. If your customers aren’t likely to use the app, then it won’t work because both parties must have it to connect. Learn how to connect search, AI, and PPC into one unstoppable strategy.

Teens And Social Media Fact Sheet

Douban is China’s primary platform for cultural discussion and criticism. The platform brings in a lot of intellectually oriented users looking for in-depth discussions about this type of creative work. WhatsApp has become an almost “de facto standard in communication” in many countries, particularly across Asia, Europe, and Latin America.

Hootsuite uses this strategy too, bringing back creators our audience knows and trusts. Our most recent influencer marketing campaign boosted impressions by 73%, met the goal for trial sign-up, and saw more than 1,000 content downloads – all real, measurable impacts on ROI. Instead, brands are looking for audience alignment combined with storytelling quality. The goal is to find creators for long-term partnerships that lead to measurable ROI, rather than one-off posts that create some awareness but don’t necessarily translate into action. We analyzed audience sentiments towards AI-generated content vs. AI slop to help you answer this question.

Apps like TikTok and Douyin are still very popular for short videos, while messaging platforms such as Telegram and WeChat are strong in many regions. As of 2025, the global social media landscape continues to be dominated by major tech giants, with Meta leading the charge. Facebook tops the list with 3.07 billion monthly active users, followed closely by WhatsApp (3 billion), YouTube (2.7 billion), Instagram (2 billion), and TikTok (1.84 billion). Messaging apps like WeChat (1.39 billion), Telegram (1 billion), and Messenger (965 million) also hold strong positions. Regional platforms such as Kuaishou, Weibo, and ShareChat demonstrate the growing influence of localized networks. Meanwhile, professional and content-sharing platforms like LinkedIn, Reddit, Pinterest, and Discord maintain substantial user bases.

It allows its users to share experiences and recommendations about restaurants, home services, auto services and more like gyms, salons, phone repairs, bars,etc. The platform significantly influences local business success through its review ecosystem. Threads is Meta’s attempt to capture users seeking Twitter alternatives. Its advantage is that it leverages Instagram’s user base for rapid adoption.

Social media bans are commonplace, and the platform is blocked in China, Iran, North Korea, Myanmar, Russia, Turkmenistan, and Uganda. Exploding Topics’ advanced algorithm monitors millions of unstructured data points to spot trends early on.

In 2025, almost 85.1 percent of people were messaging on WhatsApp every day. By 2025, it is estimated that over 53 million About YouMeTalksReview people will be using WhatsApp in Germany, suggesting its popularity as a messaging app will not diminish with time. Hootsuite benchmarking data shows that brands are posting on most social media platforms at least once a day, and more than that on Instagram, Facebook, and X. Creators post so often that they have to assure fans they’re okay after a couple days’ absence. Excessive use of social media platforms and their contribution to poor mental health, especially in young people, may be cause for concern.

But in 1997, the technology to facilitate such capacity had not yet caught up with Weinreich’s full vision. Social media now refers to web-based applications that promote the creation and exchange of user-generated content. Social media’s range is global, with its scope of topic and type of user virtually unlimited.

Which Platform(s) Should You Use?

The platform attracts users seeking alternatives to traditional corporate-controlled social networks. Badoo is one of the world’s largest dating and social discovery platforms. When it comes to social (meeting new people), Badoo uses dating features with its broader/advanced social networking capabilities.

Which makes social media marketing an excellent way to reach your customers. The platform contains several independent communities called Instances. You can take a community-first approach here by sharing meaningful content, starting interesting discussions, and keeping your community engaged. Threads by Meta is another microblogging platform designed as an alternative to X.

• This works well for providing customer support and creating an omnichannel experience.
• WeChat’s mini-programs functionality allows ecommerce brands to create a catalog of their products.
• Meanwhile, Kepios analysis of data published in the advertising resources of the world’s top platforms reveals that YouTube has the largest social media advertising audience.
• Despite facing increased competition from newer platforms, Facebook still dominates.
• Instagram profile photos are displayed at 110 x 100 pixels, but the image files are stored at 320 x 320 pixels, so make sure to upload an image that’s at least that big.

We broke down the platform’s best features and how to use them to build community and brand visibility. Kuaishou has a reputation for being more community-driven and less algorithmically intense than TikTok or Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok. This gives smaller creators more room to grow and makes the platform an interesting option for social commerce. WhatsApp is the world’s most popular messaging app, used in over 180 countries by around 3 billion people every month. For businesses, Tumblr is useful for reaching audiences interested in very specific types of content.

Tumblr is a multimedia-based microblogging platform popular among creatives. Users generally share posts about art, poetry, fandoms, and niche interests. Similar to other community-based platforms like Reddit and Telegram, Discord gives you access to buyers that fit specific personas. Like people who enjoy participating in voice chat or live events. All information shared via this account type goes into the users’ subscriptions folder instead of showing up via push notifications. Users can also search for your brands’ posts in the “Subscriptions” tab.

“I don’t consider prediction markets gambling,” said the 25-year-old, who is one of a growing number of young women encouraging the demographic to join the prediction market hype. Debate is currently raging as to whether prediction markets constitute gambling or if they are the same as investing. For Kalshi, it appears to be paying off, with women now making up 26 percent of users, a doubling from 13 percent just 10 months ago, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Moreover, social media provides data analytics that can drive informed marketing decisions and strategies, ensuring businesses can measure the effectiveness of their campaigns. Marketing on social platforms can increase brand visibility and recognition, drive targeted traffic to websites, and enhance customer loyalty through regular interaction. Because of that, it has unlimited potential for connecting with an elite group of professionals who can make a difference for your business.

However, as SimilarWeb reports, its numbers peaked in early November and have since settled back to around 750K monthly active users. With around 728 million monthly active users, Douyin is a leading social media platform in China and a powerhouse in short-form video content and social commerce. In conclusion, the social media ecosystem in 2025 is more popular, diverse, and data-driven than ever before.