In 2021, social media has become an ever-expanding and increasingly pervasive tool. With the ease in which these platforms can be used, they now pervade many aspects of our lives. Whether it be for work or leisure, social media is a tool to make life easier on ourselves and others by providing instant access to information about topics we may not have had the time for otherwise.
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That being said, as with any technology or tool that’s there to help us achieve our goals, some opportunities are better than others.
Facebook:
Facebook is still currently the most popular social media platform with more than 2.23 billion daily users as of December 2018.However, something that has hindered Facebook’s growth potential is the fact that it has already reached a global saturation point.
As of January 2019, the platform has around 70% coverage in the United States and Canada, meaning that only 30% of people therein are not on Facebook.
While it may be safe to assume that users who do not have access to Facebook (due to age or location restrictions) have spread across other platforms such as Instagram and Twitter, this does not necessarily mean that there is no room for growth among these categories.
YouTube:
While YouTube does not have the same number of users as Facebook, it has seen a 37 percent increase in users from 2017 to 2018.
This growth might be attributed, at least in part, to the fact that many content creators have realized the importance of YouTube as a way to increase their reach and gain more subscribers.
The key for YouTube’s growth is to ensure that creators are connecting with their audience. This applies not only to making videos relevant and engaging, but also via promoting hashtags and other trends related to video content itself.
Twitter:
Twitter has seen a 50 percent growth rate in its number of daily users from 2017 to 2018.
While this growth is truly remarkable when one considers the platform’s relatively small user base compared with Facebook and Instagram, Twitter still faces challenges that have prevented its rise as a major social media platform.
One of the challenges Twitter faces is the fact that it has yet to establish itself as a place where people can meet each other and interact. While some users do use Twitter for business purposes, for the most part people use it primarily for communication and entertainment purposes.
WhatsApp:
WhatsApp is a cross-platform mobile instant messaging application for smartphones with a focus on text messaging. It is designed primarily to work on mobile devices such as Android phones or iPhones, but offers support for some basic features on tablet computers when used with the official WhatsApp iPad or Android app.
Features:
* Instant messaging: Sending and receiving messages without waiting for approval.
* SMS-like messages: Compose fully formatted text messages, like those that are sent via SMS (texting), while simultaneously transmitting them as WhatsApp message through the Internet connection of either of the communicating users.
Instagram:
Instagram was launched as a mobile app in October 2010. It was founded by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, former PayPal employees, along with Brian Spaly and Mike Wilson. The initial version of the app had only 4-5 million active users per month when it was acquired by Facebook for $1 billion in 2012 (USD). In May 2018, Instagram had an estimated 600 million monthly active users. It is easy to download photos and videos from Instagram with Imginn.
Features:
* The ability to instantly upload photos or videos to the service by taking a photo or video on the phone’s camera or using the Instagram app. Most Android phones now have cameras built into them allowing instant sharing of photos and videos to Instagram as well as other social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.
TikTok:
TikTok was launched by tech company ByteDance in November 2016. The app inspired a platform that allows users to create and share videos. With a library of over 25 million short video clips, TikTok is the largest video distribution platform on the planet and has become the second most uploaded app in the App Store and Google Play stores.
Snapchat:
Snapchat is an image messaging application that was created by Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy, and Reggie Brown while they were students at Stanford University. The application was released in September 2011 on iOS as a free download and was later released for Android in April 2012. The app allows users to send photos to friends which are deleted shortly after being viewed. The name for the app was inspired by the fact that pictures often disappeared from Snapchat almost as quickly as they appeared.
Features: * Snapchat is based on mobile device location services. Users can take photos, record videos, add text or drawings, and send them to other users within a 10 mile (15 km) radius (friends).
Chloe Harmon
