It has been a tumultuous year in the world of social media: one that started with Facebook losing users for the first time in its history, with competition from TikTok and privacy changes on Apple devices signalling an existential crisis for the giant.
Twitter remains in the news under the chaotic stewardship of Elon Musk, who bought the struggling microblogging site for $44bn in October, but not before trying to pull out and being compelled to complete the deal following a legal battle.
Looking ahead to 2023, Musk's takeover has led a number of prominent Twitter users to leave (or threaten) to leave the site, but the likes of Mastodon are unlikely to break into the most used social media sites in the western world anytime soon.
Despite the site's problems attracting and retaining all-important younger users, the hit to its advertising revenue caused by Apple's decision to require iOS users to opt-in to third-party tracking, and ongoing battles with regulators in the US and EU, Facebook currently has around 1.98bn daily active users, and 2.96bn monthly active users.
Instagram, which is also owned by Facebook parent Meta Platforms, crossed the 2bn monthly active users threshold in October, but the group has come under intense scrutiny for the detrimental effect Instagram has on the mental health of teenagers.
In Association with
TikTok
TikTok, the short-form video forming site owned by Chinese company ByteDance, made it to 1.5bn users this year, and is dominating the attentions of users aged 12-17. Last year it was downloaded some 596.1m times globally across iOS and Android devices.
Snapchat
Before TikTok was stealing Instagram's lunch there was Snapchat, which now has some 363m users. Instagram responded to the challenge posed by Snapchat by cloning its Stories function, but Snapchat grew its users by 19% year-on-year in Q3.
Since carrying that sink into Twitter's offices two months ago, Musk has cut staff numbers in half, dissolved the company's trust and safety council, and seemingly taken control of moderation.
There was also his $8-per-month Twitter Blue gambit to increase revenue, which has seemingly failed, and other gimmicks such as different coloured verification ticks and publicly viewable impressions figures on tweets. Twitter now has 237.8m daily active users and a CEO whose users want him to leave, according to a poll he ran himself.
Outside of these five, there's also LinkedIn, which has some 875m accounts but doesn't report active daily or monthly usership, messaging platforms such as WhatsApp and Telegram, and Chinese sites such as Sina Weibo, QQ and Douyin.
(Pic: Getty Images)
