How people spend time on social platforms globally, in 5 charts
Facebook and Google may suck up the majority of audience and digital advertising share, but they’re not the only social platforms showing growth. Here’s a look at how and where people spend their time, across a range of countries.
Facebook dominates worldwide
Facebook is the leader in 119 of 149 countries analyzed by social media strategist Vincenzo Cosenza, using traffic data from Alexa and SimilarWeb. That leaves plenty of other countries where other platforms (albeit some that Facebook owns, like Instagram) and homegrown social networks dominate. In Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, Iran and Indonesia, Instagram is now the most popular network. In China, where Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are blocked in most areas, Qzone is the top social network, with 632 million active users, according to the same analysis. Japan is the only country where Twitter is the most popular platform, according to Cosenza.
Meanwhile, VKontakte (known as VK) and Odnoklassniki (OK.ru), which are both controlled by Russia’s Mail.Ru Group, have gained ground, Cosenza said. QQ and WeChat, China’s favorite messaging apps, have even more users than Qzone, according to Statista.
Germans favor Amazon for content
Amazon’s push into media and advertising continues to make headlines. It’s already a favorite in Germany as a platform on which to buy digital content and services, according to eMarketer. More than half of internet users in Germany buy digital content or services on Amazon, while 39 percent purchase on Google Play; 30 percent buy across other websites and 25 percent purchase on iTunes, according to the same report.
Amazon is also focused on kids in Germany, where watching movies, videos and TV series was the most common digital activity among 6- to 7-year-olds, according to a survey by Forsa for Bitkom in December 2016. Amazon is now aiming to extend its lead over paid digital content platforms in the country by expanding the mobile distribution of its child-focused content app FreeTime.
Brits spend the most time on Google
In the U.K., Google and Facebook account for 1 in 3.5 minutes of Britons’ time spent online, according to measurement firm Verto Analytics, which analyzed the internet activity of 5,000 U.K. adults.
Brits spend more than 1 in every 6 minutes (17 percent) of U.K. internet time on Google properties — primarily search, YouTube and Gmail. Around 11 percent of their time goes to Facebook-owned properties, which include WhatsApp and Instagram, according to the same report.
Oath, the newly combined offering of Yahoo and AOL, ranks seventh in where people spend their internet time in the U.K., accounting for 1.9 percent of their time.
The 10 most dominant companies in the U.K. — all of which are U.S. firms, except for the BBC — account for half of internet time, according to the report. Sky is the only other U.K. company besides the BBC in the 20 most-used sites in the U.K.
“The implications of a handful of dominant companies — particularly just two — go beyond simply which sites we surf. You have fewer sites increasingly controlling not only what you see and hear, but where advertising revenue goes,” said Hannu Verkasalo, CEO of Verto Analytics.
YouTube outpaces Facebook-owned apps in global active users
Only YouTube held its own against Facebook and its WhatsApp and Messenger apps for the highest number of active users this month, according to a report from Statista. In August, YouTube had 1.5 million active monthly users, compared to Facebook’s 2 billion, WhatsApp’s 1.2 billion and Messenger’s 1.2 billion. WeChat ranked fifth with 938 million, and Instagram had 700 million.
Facebook reaches the most 18- to 29-year-old U.S. users
In the U.S., Facebook, Instagram and YouTube have the highest shares of 18- to 29-year-old users, with 86 percent, 58 percent and 71 percent, respectively, according to Statista data from February. Twitter is next in line with 47 percent of that age group, and Snapchat follows with 45 percent of that age group.
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