The Largest Social Networks In The World Include Some Big Surprises

Social media is global, and the sheer scale and diversity of worldwide audiences on the sites makes them tremendously important.

It's no longer all about Facebook. Instead, users in some of the biggest countries are gravitating to regional sites. Others are heading en masse to U.S.-based networks, meaning that some of the largest social sites are global communities first and foremost.

In a recent report from BI Intelligence, we compare the world's largest social networks in two ways. First, we evaluate the biggest properties side-by-side in terms of total audience size. Then we analyze the markets where each has the most growth potential, and their demographics in terms of country-of-origin.

Here are some of the most surprising facts from our first annual global media census:

• Facebook still has the largest user population but YouTube is close behind Facebook with 1 billion MAUs.
• China's giant social media network, Qzone, is running in third place at 712 million total users. It's twice as large as global social messaging app WhatsApp, and nearly three times as large as Twitter.
• Three of the world's top 10 social properties are messaging platforms: WhatsApp, LINE, and WeChat.
• Twitter is smaller than many of its less-known rivals, including Tumblr, WhatsApp, and LINE.
• Eighty-six percent of Facebook's users are outside the United States.
• Nearly 25% of LinkedIn's users are in India. In fact, there are more Indians than Americans on LinkedIn and Google+.
• Despite being blocked in China, the major social networks still have many millions of Chinese active users who use various stratagems to access these services. Google+ has 100 million users in China, Twitter has 80 million, and YouTube has 60 million.

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In full, the report:

• Provides a census comparing social networks to one another in active audience size
• Examines the nuances of how each of the largest social networks shape up on a global level and where their audiences are coming from
• Posits where the major social networks might next build their audience
• Takes a regional look at how social media usage has developed in the biggest markets, and how behavior is shifting
• Zooms back out to take a broad look at where the biggest social audiences reside