Major Players in the Market of 4.5 billion Customers

Dubai, United Arab Emirates: According to the Global TOP 5 Social Media Companies, Alphabet is the leading world’s company providing social media. The founder of Google and owner of YouTube is followed by Meta Platforms and Tencent Holdings. Gulf Brokers Ltd. created the list of the largest corporations operating the social media networks according to their market capitalization. In its study (February 2022) Gulf Brokers has been looking into how the networks of TOP 5 are currently doing and, who are the competitors that have the potential to change the game in the future.

The number of monthly active users of social media networks increased by almost a tenth year-on-year to more than 4.5 billion in the Q4 of 2021. This represents a share of 58% of the total world population. It is for sure that the coronavirus pandemic has helped such a major expansion of social media.

The world of social media is ruled by Meta Platforms, which was still called Facebook until November last year. Its family of social networks is used by almost three billion users on a daily basis. The vast majority are on Facebook (about 1.93 billion), followed by WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook Messenger.

The second most widespread platform among social networks is YouTube, which is a part of the technology giant Google, or its parent company Alphabet. Approximately two billion users connect to YouTube each month.

Social networking is no longer the domain of American companies. Chinese companies, which are growing rapidly thanks to social media, are also gaining in popularity. It is primarily the Chinese multinational group Tencent Holdings, which is the third-largest of its kind in the world in terms of market capitalization. Its communication platforms include QQ or WeChat.

The three largest social network providers’ revenues reached almost $500 billion a year. The source of income is mainly advertising.

Besides business, social networks also have considerable political and social influence. That is why politicians of practically all major countries in the world are puzzled by the regulation of social networks. Institutional regulation seems to be the only power to limit the dynamics of this phenomenon of life in the 21^st century.