Not many know that the world’s three most popular networks — Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram — are owned by one entity, which is Facebook Inc. Two of them, Facebook and WhatsApp have a billion plus registered members. The only other Social Media platform with a billion plus registered users is YouTube.
If we leave out the two Chinese sites, WeChat and Qzone, the next biggest Social Media Platform is Instagram with 500 million users.
So, what is the world looking at? One company, that is Facebook Inc, dominating the Social Media landscape. If you add up the Facebook Inc members it totals to an astounding 3 billion plus.
The next largest is Linkedin with 433 million members. These are impressive figures but are dwarfed by the size of Facebook Inc membership.
And where is Twitter? This microblogging site with 310 million registered users is just about one tenth of Facebook Inc membership. So is Snapchat with 300 million members. Pinterest, in comparison, has 100 million active members.
Google with YouTube and Google+ is the second largest Social Media player. But even this Internet powerhouse is less than half the size of Facebook Inc when it comes to registered users.
So, what you are seeing is the growing dominance of Facebook. It is fast tightening its hold on the Social Media universe.
This is not to say that the other Social media platforms are becoming irrelevant. No. They are still very powerful in their respective domains. However, they are being rapidly left behind by Facebook Inc.
Every time Facebook changes its News Feed algorithm the world scrambles to make adjustments. The fate of hundreds of businesses rests on how Facebook breathes now. A small tweak can bring disaster.
Is it good for the growth of Social Media? Should one player become more important and more powerful than others? What are its implications on social conversations and on business?
The dominance of Facebook Inc is well brought out by this Statista infographic:
Infographic Source: Statista
It’s crazy how much power users are willing to give Facebook. If you use Facebook itself, Instagram, and WhatsApp, the company knows practically everything there is about you. I still use Facebook, but I went back to Flickr (not for privacy reasons, though), and I started using Threema instead of WhatsApp.