Facebook’s unnoticed and subtle decline
Since 2012 when Facebook achieved the impressive milestone of one billion monthly active users, this social media platform has consolidated its leadership position among the world’s largest platforms. Nowadays, according to recent reports publicly available, it has reached over 2.7 billion users, as displayed in Figure 01, and way ahead of the competition.
However, although the numbers displayed in Figure 01 are relevant, they do not reveal the full picture regarding the world of social media platforms. Within that, it is possible to ask: what is one of the main benefits granted by social media platforms? Well, they contribute to the amplification of people’s agency and enable them to convey their ideas, points of views, beliefs and narratives about a wide array of topics to a large audience. Ultimately, what does it mean? We are talking about influence potential.
Although many people might not have noticed, influence has indeed become one of the most important assets in the world of social media platforms. Through an individual’s influence potential, one can not only profit financially from it (what is better known as monetisation) but also impact a great number of people through their ideas conveyed online. That is, having their voice heard and considered by a large number of people. Having said that, how does this aspect affect the ranking of the world’s largest social media platforms?
To address this relevant question, since no previous studies have explored this aspect of influence potential, I have developed a simple albeit effective methodology to measure the relative influence of different social media platforms. I went after the most influential people on social media worldwide and have identified a total of 113 names. These are people with at least 25 million followers across their different social media accounts.
As one can imagine, some of these users, are well-known celebrities and famous people, while many others are not that known by people outside their circle or niche; however, besides this fact they also manage to gather a large number of followers around them. Subsequently, I analysed their profile to identify in which platforms they currently have an account and how many followers they have in each one of them.
As one can expect many of these 113 people have multiple social media accounts and, therefore, it is also normal that the total number of followers is not formed solely by unique users. Instead, there are many overlaps. Nonetheless, altogether, these 113 people can engage the impressive number of 11,58 billion followers, which is quite significant despite the explained overlaps.
Regarding the distribution of this sample of 113 social media users, it is interesting to observe that the majority of them (80 out of 113) have less than 100 million followers in total across all their social media accounts (see Figure 03). These numbers are impressive for two main reasons. First, the user with the lowest number of followers in the sample has achieved 25,4 million, which I believe that everyone might agree that is a considerable figure. Second, the average number of followers in this group is around 47 million followers, which is equally impressive.
Finally, what concerns social media users with more than 100 million followers, it comprises a small group of just 33 people (less than 1/3 of the sample) because to achieve a volume of this magnitude one needs strong, consistent, and massive media exposition. This explanation is important because it contributes to reinforcing the fact that the sample of 113 social media users is not dominated solely by celebrities and famous people. Instead, it comprises a varied cohort of individuals.
Having said that, the results displayed in Figure 02 are quite surprising. Based on the sample of 113 most influential people on social media, it was possible to identify where the majority of their followers are concentrated, which, consequently, reveals to us which platforms are more influential.
The numbers in Figure 02 above represent first that, even though Facebook is twice as large as Instagram regarding the number of active followers, as seen in Figure 01, the latter has become the world’s most influential social media platform. After all, 44.2% of the followers of the 113 most influential people are concentrated on this platform.
Following Instagram, it is possible to notice that Twitter’s share accounts for 19.1% of the concentration of followers, which positions it as the second most influential platform, although it is seven times smaller than Facebook regarding the total number of active users. Even Tik Tok, the ‘new kid on the block’, has achieved 16.8% of the share among the most influential social media platforms, while Facebook was left behind with 16.3%.
Finally, YouTube appears in the last position with just 3.6%. Although there are many successful YouTubers with millions of followers, the largest accounts belong to news media corporations. Thus, since the focus of the present article is centred solely on individuals, they were disregarded to keep consistency in the analysis.
Therefore, the combination of the figures reveals that, despite Facebook’s impressive number of monthly active users in excess of 2.7 billion, it seems that it is no longer the most influential social media platform. Obviously, it does not mean to say that the corporation per se is facing some sort of financial decline because it is also the owner of Instagram, FB Messenger and WhatsApp.
However, the results suggest that new generations of social media users and their followers might be shifting their interest towards other platforms. Ultimately, who knows if five years from now the numbers displayed in Figure 01 will look very different? Time will tell us.
