Facebook, which is blocked in China, seems far away from us, yet it surprisingly has 95 million users in China.
Social media is transcending the limitations of geography, scale, and user diversity that once made them very important. The era of Facebook's dominance has passed; in some countries, users are being drawn to regional websites.
A new report by BI Intelligence compares the world's largest social networks in two aspects. First, it evaluates the largest social network assets by total user base; second, it analyzes the markets with the greatest potential for growth and the demographic distribution of users in each country.
Here are 10 of the most surprising facts from BI Intelligence's first annual global social media census report:
1. Facebook still has the largest user base with 1.16 billion monthly active users. However, rarely mentioned is that YouTube follows closely behind with 1 billion monthly active users.
2. China’s largest social media network, QQ Zone, has 712 million users, placing it third. It is twice as large as the global messaging app WhatsApp and four times as large as Twitter.
3. Among the world's top 10 social network assets, three are messaging platforms: WhatsApp, Line, and WeChat.
4. The soon-to-be-listed Twitter is smaller than many lesser-known competitors, including Tumblr, WhatsApp, and Line.
5. 86% of Facebook users are located outside the United States.
6. Facebook has 95 million users in China, 68 million in India, and 42 million in Brazil. Together, these users amount to twice the number of Facebook users in the U.S. (100 million).
7. Nearly 25% of LinkedIn users are in India. In fact, both LinkedIn and Google+ have more users in India than in the U.S.
8. Despite some major social networks being blocked in China, millions of Chinese active users access these services through various means. Google+ has 100 million users in China, Twitter has 80 million, and YouTube has 60 million.
9. LinkedIn is the only major social network not blocked in China, with over 20 million users there.
10. The Asia-Pacific region has more active social media users than any other region. When discussing mobile social media usage, the Southeast Asian market is particularly active. 82% of Thai smartphone users access social media on their phones every day.
PS: Previously, whenever I wrote about Facebook and Twitter, people would say they don't exist on this planet. This time, statistics show that Facebook in China actually has so many users. Do you believe it, fellow netizens?