The Surprising Facts About The Biggest Social Media Audiences Around The World

BI Intelligence

Social media transcends geography, and the sheer scale and diversity of audiences on the sites makes them tremendously important.

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 biggest surprises:

• YouTube ranks close behind Facebook for number of monthly active users (MAUs), for second-place worldwide.
• China's Qzone is the third largest social network in the world.
• Three of the world's top 10 social properties are messaging platforms: WhatsApp, LINE, and WeChat.
• Nearly 90% of Facebook users reside outside the U.S.
• About one-quarter of LinkedIn's users are in India. In fact, there are more Indians than Americans on LinkedIn and Google+.
• Major social networks that are officially blocked in China 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.
• Asia-Pacific overall has more active social media users than any region, and several Southeast Asian markets are off the charts when it comes to mobile social media usage. Eighty-two percent of Thai smartphone owners access social media daily on their phones.

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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