Social platform daus

Since I put together Open Social DAUs, it's useful to compare this with current social platforms.

In contrast to Open Social Protocols, I'll define Social Platforms as those that are proprietary systems run by one company. These systems all "compete" with each other, in the sense that people can only spend so much time looking at so many different apps and networks.

For Open Social Protocols, I tend to exclude chat only systems, as well as any other platform where posts are primarily private between members.

Posts are available on the web, publicly linkable / browse-able, and the core activity is in public. This means they can be widely shared, embedded, covered in the media, and so on.

At the same time, just "microblogging that mostly is a Twitter clone" is less helpful – Instagram has a gigantic user base, and fits a lot of this criteria, and definitely isn't microblogging.

Also: per-country / region information is highly relevant, including platforms that see wide usage in primarily one country.

Statista April 2024 Social Networks

This statistic uses the broad term social network. Surprising to see YouTube here, but I guess Instagram has lots of video now too (and of course TikTok). Facebook to me is also mostly private / you need to be logged in. Pinterest doesn't feel like the same kind of activity either? I may

Applying my filter, these are the only two I'd pick out:

• Instagram 2B MAUs
• X/Twitter 611M MAUs

Yeah, I think I need to update my thinking on this. My own bias of not really producing / consuming video definitely colours my thinking.

From Statista, April 2024