Social Media Status Report: How The Major Platforms Stack Up In 2024

In 2024, the social media landscape is diverse, dynamic and filled with opportunities. Adapting to each platform's unique strengths, embracing creativity and staying authentic are key factors for success. As the digital world continues to evolve, brands who navigate these platforms strategically will make a lasting impact. We’ve crunched the latest data for this social media status report.

Instagram

With 1.4 billion monthly active users worldwide, Instagram remains a social media powerhouse.

• Heavy Competition: With 95 million photos and videos shared daily on Instagram, it’s tough for brands to cut through to consumers. Being active on the platform is not enough. Instead, you must learn how to use the platform effectively.
• Get Creative: Rather than adhering to trends and blindly following what all of your competitors are doing, you must learn how to make your one post stand out. Develop creative strategies that play to Instagram’s strengths, while still showcasing the best of your brand.
• Don’t Forget About Stories: If you thought Instagram was just about posting to your photo feed, think again. Instagram says that about half of its active users are checking out Stories on a daily basis.
• Influencer Insta: It’s the age of the influencer on Instagram. Stats say that 37% of users interact with influencers, meaning that brand partnerships can pay off in big ways.

Facebook

It’s no longer the new kid on the social media block, but Facebook shouldn’t be discounted by brands; the platform is predicted to reach 3.07 billion users by Q1 2024.

• Face Time: Users spend an average of 57 minutes per day on Facebook, totaling 28 hours every month and 20,000 minutes every year.
• Still Pivoting To Video: Videos make up more than 15% of Facebook content, with an average of 100 million hours viewed daily by Facebook users globally. However, a recent study found that people watch 85% of Facebook videos without sound. The majority of Facebook videos begin playing without audio, so it's vital to focus on visuals to grab the viewer's attention.
• Telling Stories: The rise of Facebook Stories is another significant tool to the Facebook franchise. Currently, Facebook Stories boasts an impressive 300 million daily active users. When used in conjunction with News Feed Campaigns and placement optimization, Facebook ad performance may increase by up to 26%.

TikTok

Continuing its meteoric rise, TikTok is projected to outpace the growth of advertising businesses at Amazon, Google and Meta by 2025, with a staggering rate of over 22%.

• Happy Place: Compared to other social media platforms, TikTok is a largely positive experience for users. Ninety percent of TikTok-ers report that the app makes them happy and never gets boring.
• Major Reach: With 1 billion active monthly users worldwide, TikTok’s potential ad reach is astronomical, with a potential reach of 945 million among 18+ users.
• E-Commerce Powerhouse: Ranked at the top by marketers as the most innovative advertiser, TikTok is showing itself to be an effective e-commerce marketplace. Fifty percent of users report they’ve bought something after watching a TikTok LIVE. The platform also recently unveiled the TikTok Shop, an all-encompassing in-app commerce solution.

Pinterest

The image sharing/social media giant known as Pinterest continues to chug along, finding a good balance between art and commerce.

• Different Demographics: Pinterest’s user base is more than 75% female and has significantly fewer Gen Z users than Facebook, TikTok and Snapchat. Pinterest also gets much usage from those households earning more than $75,000 (40%).
• Creative Inspiration: Brands can tap into Pinterest trends to inspire fresh content ideas across verticals or inform your ad aesthetic. Dig into the specific search queries listed with each trend to get more detail on what people will search for in the future.
• AI Enhanced: Collages are coming to Pinterest. Using AI enabled tech users will soon be able to cut out parts of an image and put them together — basically an expansion of the popular Shuffles function.

X

Formerly known as Twitter, X has had a rough time since Elon Musk bought the platform in 2022. But it’s not out yet.

• Still Thriving: X/Twitter is among the top six social networking apps in the United States, boasting more than 500 million users worldwide; more than 200 million of those users access the app daily.
• Consume vs. Create: Data shows that 10% of Twitter users are responsible for 92% of the tweets from all U.S. users, meaning there’s a particularly active group of users publishing a large chunk of content, with the rest on the platform to consume that content.
• Controversy: Many advertisers have found Elon Musk’s often controversial antics to be too much and have removed (or significantly lessened) their presence from the platform. Whether this will continue in 2024 remains to be seen.

BeReal

Touting itself as “authentic social media,” BeReal encourages users to break free of the more artificial nature of other platforms and embrace the moment.

• Quick Rise: BeReal had a big launch in 2022, quickly reaching close to 75 million users. But enthusiasm quickly cooled; now, the app boasts roughly 10 million active users.
• User Enthusiasm: It may not flaunt the same numbers as other more popular platforms, but BeReal’s users — which are primarily female and under the age of 45 — are enthusiastic about it.
• Comeback Kid: BeReal has promised new features in the coming months that may get more users onboard. We’ll stay tuned.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the top B2B platform, with three-quarters of marketers using it to reach business decision-makers.

• Adding Up: Businesses see a 33% purchase intent increase with LinkedIn Ads — over a third of buyers who see a business’ ad on LinkedIn research the company with the purpose of purchasing a product.
• Stay Active: Companies that thoroughly fill out their business pages and actively post receive more page views. In addition, they also see seven times the impressions and eleven times the clicks per follower.
• Images Work: Users who want LinkedIn to stop and interact with their content use images as these posts see twice the engagement as those without images. In addition, larger images have a 38% greater click-through rate.

YouTube

As the second most popular social media network worldwide, YouTube has over 122 million active users daily.

• Big Numbers: The stats speak for themselves when it comes to YouTube’s strength: Sixty-two percent of U.S. users access the site daily; YouTube Shorts has crossed the 50 billion daily view mark, up from 30 billion the previous year.
• Commercial Appeal: Fifty-seven percent of YouTube users say that YouTube ads are more relevant than ads on linear TV or other streaming apps.
• Influencing: YouTube influencers continue to find success on the platform. Creators with 100K to 1 million followers get the highest engagement rates, with an average 4.14%.

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