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The Rise and Fall of Social Media Platforms

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The Rise and Fall of Social Media Platforms

Since its inception, the internet has played a pivotal role in connecting people across the globe, including in remote locations.

While the foundational need for human connection hasn’t changed, platforms and technology continue to evolve, even today. Faster internet connections and mobile devices have made social networks a ubiquitous part of our lives, with the time spent on social media each day creeping ever upward.

The Scoreboard Today

Over the last 15 years, billions of people around the world have jumped onto the social media bandwagon – and platforms have battled for our attention spans by inventing (and sometimes flat-out stealing) features to keep people engaged.

Here’s a snapshot of where things stand today:

Global RankSocial PlatformParent CompanyMonthly Active Users
1Facebook🇺🇸 Facebook2.2 billion
2Instagram🇺🇸 Facebook1.1 billion
3Qzone🇨🇳 Tencent528 million
4Weibo🇨🇳 Sina Corp528 million
5TikTok🇨🇳 ByteDance 524 million
6Twitter🇺🇸 Twitter340 million
7Pinterest🇺🇸 Pinterest329 million
8Snapchat🇺🇸 Snap Inc302 million
9LinkedIn🇺🇸 Microsoft260 million

Today’s entertaining video, from the Data is Beautiful YouTube channel, is a look back at the rise and fall of social media platforms – and possibly a glimpse at the future of social media as well.

Below we respond to some key questions and observations raised by this video overview.

Points of Interest

1. What is QZone?

Qzone is China’s largest social network. The platform originally evolved as a sort of blogging service that sprang from QQ, China’s seminal instant messaging service. While Qzone is still one of the world’s largest social media sites – it still attracts around half a billion users per month – WeChat is now the service of choice for almost everyone in China with a smartphone.

2. LinkedIn has been around for a long time.

It’s true. LinkedIn, which hasn’t left the top 10 list since 2003, is a textbook example of a slow and steady growth strategy paying off.

While some networks experience swings in their user base or show a boom and bust growth pattern, LinkedIn has grown every single year since it was launched. Surprisingly, that growth is still clocking in at impressive rates. In 2019, for example, LinkedIn reported a 24% increase in sessions on their platform.

3. Will Facebook ever lose its top spot?

Never say never, but not anytime soon. Since 2008, Facebook has been far and away the most popular social network on the planet. If you include Facebook’s bundled services, over 2 billion people use their network each day. The company has used acquisitions and aggressive feature implementation to keep the company at the forefront of the battle for attention. Facebook itself is under a lot of scrutiny due to growing privacy concerns, but Instagram and WhatsApp are more popular than ever.

4. What Happened to Snapchat?

In 2016, Snapchat had thoroughly conquered the Gen Z demographic and was on a trajectory to becoming one of the top social networks. Facebook, sensing their position being challenged by this upstart company, took the bold step of cloning Snapchat’s features and integrating them into Instagram (even lifting the name “stories” in the process). The move paid off for Facebook and the video above shows Instagram’s user base taking off in 2016, fueled by these new features.

Even though Facebook took some of the wind out of Snapchat’s sails, the company never stopped growing. Earlier this year, Snapchat announced modest growth as its base of daily active users rose to 190 million. For advertisers looking to reach the 18-35 age demographic, Snapchat could still be a compelling option.

5. Why is TikTok so popular now?

The simple answer is that short-form video is extremely popular right now, and TikTok has features that make sharing fun. The average user of TikTok (and its Chinese counterpart, DouYin) spends a staggering 52 minutes per day on the app.

TikTok user growth

Also propelling its growth is the company’s massive marketing budget. TikTok spent $1 billon last year on advertising in the U.S., and is currently burning through around $3 million per day to get people onto their platform. One looming question for the China-based company is not whether Facebook will co-opt their features, but when.

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Technology

Charted: The Jobs Most Impacted by AI

We visualized the results of an analysis by the World Economic Forum, which uncovered the jobs most impacted by AI.

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Charted: The Jobs Most Impacted by AI

This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.

Large language models (LLMs) and other generative AI tools haven’t been around for very long, but they’re expected to have far-reaching impacts on the way people do their jobs. With this in mind, researchers have already begun studying the potential impacts of this transformative technology.

In this graphic, we’ve visualized the results of a World Economic Forum report, which estimated how different job departments will be exposed to AI disruption.

Data and Methodology

To identify the job departments most impacted by AI, researchers assessed over 19,000 occupational tasks (e.g. reading documents) to determine if they relied on language. If a task was deemed language-based, it was then determined how much human involvement was needed to complete that task.

With this analysis, researchers were then able to estimate how AI would impact different occupational groups.

DepartmentLarge impact (%)Small impact (%)No impact (%)
IT73261
Finance70219
Customer Sales671617
Operations651817
HR57412
Marketing56413
Legal46504
Supply Chain431839

In our graphic, large impact refers to tasks that will be fully automated or significantly altered by AI technologies. Small impact refers to tasks that have a lesser potential for disruption.

Where AI will make the biggest impact

Jobs in information technology (IT) and finance have the highest share of tasks expected to be largely impacted by AI.

Within IT, tasks that are expected to be automated include software quality assurance and customer support. On the finance side, researchers believe that AI could be significantly useful for bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing.

Still interested in AI? Check out this graphic which ranked the most commonly used AI tools in 2023.

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