World’s Most Popular Social Media Network & Active Users

What Is The World’s Most Popular Social Media Network, Monthly Active Users?

What is Social Media?

Social media are interactive technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression through virtual communities and networks. While challenges to the definition of social media arise due to the variety of stand-alone and built-in social media services currently available, there are some common features.

1. Social media are interactive Web 2.0 Internet-based applications.

2. User-generated content - such as text posts or comments, digital photos or videos, and data generated through all online interactions - is the lifeblood of social media.

3. Users create service-specific profiles for the website or app that are designed and maintained by the social media organization.

4. Social media helps the development of online social networks by connecting a user's profile with those of other individuals or groups.

World’s Most Popular Social Media Networks

Currently, more than 4.5 billion people worldwide use some form of social media – approximately 57% of the global population.

Yet, while the social media audience is wide and diverse, only a handful of companies control the world's most popular social media platforms. Tech giant Meta, formerly known as Facebook, owns four of the five most widely used platforms.

This graphic highlights the largest social networks worldwide, as measured by their monthly active users (MAUs).

Note: We will use the terms "social network" and "social platform" interchangeably to refer to different messaging, video, and image-sharing platforms that have social attributes built-in.

Top Social Platforms by Monthly Active Users

To measure each platform's MAU, we dug into a variety of sources, including the most recent company SEC filings and quarterly earnings reports.

Most of Meta's user base comes from its most popular platform, Facebook—the social media giant, which currently has around 2.9 billion MAUs worldwide.

Top Social Platforms by Monthly Active Users
No	Social Media	Parent company	Country	Monthly active users
1	Facebook	Meta	U.S	2,910M+
2	YouTube	Alphabet	U.S	2,291M+
3	WhatsApp	Meta	U.S	2,000M+
4	Messenger	Meta	U.S	1,300M+
5	Instagram	Meta	U.S	1,287M+
6	WeChat	Tencent	China	1,000M+
7	Kuaishou	Kuaishou	China	1,000M+
8	TikTok	Bytedance	China	1,000M+
9	Telegram	Telegram	UAE	600M+
10	Qzone	Tencent	China	600M+
11	QQ	Tencent	China	591M+
12	Weibo	Sina	China	566M+
13	Douyin	Bytedance	China	550M+
14	Snapchat	Snap	U.S	538M+
15	Twitter	Twitter	U.S	463M+
16	Pinterest	Pinterest	U.S	454M+
17	Reddit	Reddit	U.S	430M+
18	LinkedIn	Microsoft	U.S	310M+
19	Quora	Quora	U.S	310M+
20	Skype	Microsoft	U.S	310M+
21	Tieba	Baidu	China	300M+
22	Viber	Rakuten	Japan	250M+
23	Teams	Microsoft	U.S	250M+
24	IMO	PageBites	U.S	250M+
25	Line	Naver	South Korea	169M+
26	Picsart	Picsart	U.S	150M+
27	Likee	Bigo Live	Singapore	150M+
28	Discord	Discord	U.S	140M+

Where in the world are Facebook users located? The largest user base of the platform comes from India, with an audience size of around 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 around 2 billion MAUs, making it the second-largest platform on Meta and the third largest social network overall.

Like Facebook, India also has a large number of WhatsApp users, which has around 390 million users. Brazil also has a large share of WhatsApp users, with an audience size of 108 million.