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: America’s Largest Semiconductor Companies
This graphic visualizes the market capitalizations of America’s 15 largest semiconductor companies.
Ranking America’s Largest Semiconductor Companies
As our world moves further into an era of widespread digitization, few industries can be considered as important as semiconductors.
These components are found in almost everything we use on a daily basis, and the ability to produce them domestically has become a topic of national security. For example, in 2022 the Biden administration announced the CHIPS and Science Act, which aims to strengthen America’s position in everything from clean energy to artificial intelligence.
With this in mind, we’ve ranked the top 15 U.S. semiconductor companies by their market capitalizations.
Data and Highlights
The data we used to create this infographic is listed in the table below. Year-to-date (YTD) returns were included for additional context. Both metrics are as of May 30, 2023.
| Rank | Company | Ticker | Market Cap (USD billions) | YTD Return |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Nvidia | NVDA | $992 | 180.2% |
| 2 | Broadcom | AVGO | $335 | 45.1% |
| 3 | AMD | AMD | $202 | 95.7% |
| 4 | Texas Instruments | TXN | $160 | 8.2% |
| 5 | Qualcomm | QCOM | $129 | 8.2% |
| 6 | Intel | INTC | $125 | 12.2% |
| 7 | Applied Materials | AMAT | $115 | 41.2% |
| 8 | Analog Devices | ADI | $89 | 9.2% |
| 9 | Lam Research | LRCX | $85 | 52.1% |
| 10 | Micron Technology | MU | $78 | 42.3% |
| 11 | Snyopsys | SNPS | $71 | 45.4% |
| 12 | KLA | KLAC | $63 | 21.8% |
| 13 | Marvell Technology Group | MRVL | $54 | 76.2% |
| 14 | Microchip Technology | MCHP | $42 | 11.2% |
| 15 | ON Semiconductor | ON | $36 | 36.3% |
At the top is Nvidia, which became America’s newest $1 trillion company on Tuesday, May 30th. Shares pulled back slightly over the day and Nvidia closed at $992 billion. Over the past decade, Nvidia has transformed from a gaming-focused graphics card producer to a global leader in AI and data center chips.
In third and sixth place are two of America’s most well known chipmakers, AMD and Intel. These longtime rivals are moving in opposite trajectories, with AMD shares climbing 770% over the past five years, and Intel shares falling 47%. One reason for this is the data center segment, in which AMD appears to be stealing market share from Intel.
Further down the list we see Applied Materials in seventh, and Lam Research in ninth. Both firms specialize in semiconductor manufacturing equipment and thus play an important role in the industry’s supply chain.
Trade War Impacts
As tensions between the U.S. and China escalate, chipmakers are becoming increasingly entangled in geopolitical conflict.
In October 2022, the Biden administration introduced new export controls aimed at blocking China’s access to semiconductors produced with U.S. equipment. This impacted several companies in our top 15 list, including Lam Research and Applied Materials.
Shortly after the export controls were announced, Lam Research said it expected to lose upwards of $2.5 billion in annual revenues.
We lost some very profitable customers in the China region, and that’s going to persist, obviously.
– Doug Bettinger, CFO, Lam Research
In response, China announced in May 2023 that it would no longer allow America’s largest memory chipmaker, Micron, to sell its products to “critical national infrastructure operators”.
This is not the first time Micron has been involved in a controversy with China. In 2018, the firm alleged that Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit, a Chinese state-owned company, had solicited a Micron employee to steal specifications for memory chips. The U.S. Department of Commerce imposed export restrictions on Fujian Jinhua as a result.
Chipmakers on both sides of the Pacific will be closely watching as competition between these two countries heats up.
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