Extrapolations

Social Media Users


Hootsuite and We Are Social publish an annual report detailing internet use and social media growth. In their 2018 report, they list the most active social platforms (slide 59), led by Facebook (2,167B MAUs), with WeChat at #5 (980M MAUs). Because Facebook is still not used in China (not broadly), we have added the Facebook and WeChat user figures to roughly approximate the number of people using social media. At 3.147B, this comes very close to the report’s estimate of active social media users (3.196B).

src:
We Are Social/Hootsuite, Jan 2018
“2018 Global Digital”
full set of slides

I tallied historic MAU data from Facebook (Q3 2008 – Q4 2017) and WeChat (Q2 2011 – Q2 2017)

src:
Facebook via Statista, Jan 2018
“Number of monthly active Facebook users worldwide as of 4th quarter 2017 (in millions)”

src:
Tencent via Statista, Aug 2017
“Number of monthly active WeChat users from 2nd quarter 2010 to 2nd quarter 2017 (in millions)”

I calculated this tally as a percentage of global population, to be compared against the percent of global internet users (reported by the Internet Telecommunications Union).

global population src:
United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. World Population Prospects: The 2017 Revision. (Medium-fertility variant).
via Worldometers

I used Excel to create trend lines (2deg polynomial) showing when each set (internet users and social media users) might reach 100% saturation.

The data are collected in the following Excel file:
global-internet-users-ITU-2001-2017-extrap-to-2030

And a simplified Google Drawing is here:
https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/1qbYyLORAMPYAtwZkrZxN0-VTfjUpPLoZL-SV-z-IB9E/edit?usp=sharing

Other bits of interest:

Dragon Social, Oct 2017
“10 Most Popular Social Media Sites in China”

eMarketer, June 2017
“Percent of Internet users who use a social network at least 1x/month”
2016-2021

Business Insider, Sep 2016
“Messaging apps are now bigger than social networks”
[crossing chart]
2011-2017

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Posted by cc on May 2, 2018 at 9:35 pm | comment count




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