Our lives are run on social media. Finding news, searching for jobs, communicating with friends and family, shopping, entertainment and a thousand other activities are all coordinated and carried out via a series of carefully managed social media profiles.
So naturally, social media sites across the board have registered steady year-on-year growth, both in terms of revenue as well as number of users. And as the user bases for these sites get bigger, the companies themselves are starting to invest heavily in building high-end data centers to meet the ever-growing demand for hosting and content delivery.
In fact, IT spending on social media is expected to nearly triple by 2019, hitting a market value of $60.4 billion. Overall, the market is expected to grow at a cumulative average growth rate of 22.2% from 2014-2019.
Social media: More than Facebook and Twitter
When we talk about social media, a lot of people immediately think of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat. But if you’re under the impression that these are the only, or even the biggest social sites out there, then it’s time to think again.
While the four mentioned above are some of the heavy hitters, with combined users in the billions, they’re hardly even the tip of the iceberg when it comes to social media sites available worldwide.
Leading social networks worldwide as of August 2015, ranked by number of active users (in millions)
Source: Statista, Facebook; We Are Social; WhatsApp; Twitter; Tumblr; LinkedIn; Google
21 top social media platforms worldwide
Bubbly
A smartphone application that enables users to create their own voice blogs in real time and share it with other users. It was developed by Singapore-based startup Bubble Motion, previously founded in 2005 and later changed its name to Bubbly. It has received $39 million of funding by seven investors till now. In Aug 2014, it was acquired by Altruist Technologies.
An online social networking service launched in February 2004. It generated revenue of $12.46 billion in 2014. It has more than 1.44 billion users per month. Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus VR, and PrivateCore are its subsidiaries. In terms of IT spending, Facebook is planning to build its new data center in Fort Worth, Texas. It has already built its four other data centers located in Altoona, Lowa; Forest City, North California; Prineville, Oregon; and Lulea, Sweden.
Frilp
An online platform that helps users find trusted shops and services through their friends and other people. It was founded in February 2003 and is headquartered in Chennai. So far, the site has received over $500k of funding.
Google+
Google is the biggest search engine in the world. Google+ is the social networking service developed by Google. It has currently more than 560 million users. It was launched in June 2011. In terms of IT spending, Google has spent massively on the expansion of its global data center network, valued at $7.35 billion in 2013. YouTube is a video-sharing website and one of the subsidiaries of Google, which seeks a lot of investment in terms of setting up data centers.
A popular photo sharing application that allows users to take pictures, add filters and other features, and share them on various social networks. Before being acquired by Facebook in April 2012, it had raised funding of $57.5 million.
Line
A Japanese-based calling and messaging application that allows consumers to send messages and make free calls with other users, regardless of their mobile network provider. In February 2015 it acquired Webpay, an auto scaling and cloud hosting service provider.
A business oriented social networking website that allows users to strengthen their professional network and job search. It was launched in May 2003 and has more than 380 million users. It spent over $500 million to set up its IT infrastructure mainly including data centers, networking equipment, and storage.
Path
A social networking-enabled photo sharing and messaging service for smartphone devices, founded in November 2010. Indonesia is the world’s largest path user base with over 4 million users. It has raised funding of $77 million till now and it was acquired by Daum Kakao in May 2015.
A photo sharing website, launched in March 2010. It earns most of its revenue from its advertisement business segment headquartered in the US. It has received $1.3 billion of investment from 25 investors till now and acquired six companies including Kosei, Icebergs, Visual Graph, Hackermeter, Livestar, and Punchfork
Tencent QQ, popularly referred to as simply QQ is an IM software developed by Tencent Holdings Inc, a Chinese company. The network also offers games, music, group and voice chats and boasts 832 million active users. Tencent also offers a social network called QZone, which allows users to write blogs, and send and receive various media like photos, music and videos.
A social networking, entertainment, and news website, which (pretty accurate) describes itself as “the front page of the internet”.
Sina Weibo
The microblogging site has been compared to a mashup of Twitter and Facebook.
Skype
Microsoft’s text, voice, and video calling service operates as both a free and paid model and is used widely for both personal and business communication.
Snapchat
A photo and video-sharing application, founded in September 2011. The app has gone through more than four acquisitions and has raised $1.2 billion in funding to date.
Tumblr
The internet loves to hate on Tumblr, but the blogging platform, which tends to rally around fandoms and communities, still has 230 million active users.
An online social networking website service that allows users to tweet messages. In 2014, the site generated a revenue of $1.4 billion and by May 2015, it had 302 million active users. In terms of IT spending it has spent $180 million, primarily attributed to increase the additional server and networking equipment with support and maintenance costs.
Viber
A media messaging and VoIP company founded in October 2010 that allows users to send free text messages, photos, and videos. It was acquired by Rakuten in February 2014.
VKontakte
VKontakte or VK is a hugely popular Russian social network site, similar to Facebook. Despite a relatively tumultuous history, the site still attracts about 100 million active users.
A mobile text and voice messaging service founded by Tencent in China in January 2011. It is one of the largest messaging apps in terms of monthly users.
WhatsApp offers a free instant messaging subscription service for smartphones users.
Whisper
An anonymous social networking application that allows users to share confessions, express opinions, and meet new people. It was founded in 2012 and it has raised $61 million of funding to date.
