Social media has become a daily part of our life due to its immense amount of uses, the biggest one being its cost-effectiveness and the ability to carry out seamless communication over long distances.
Social media has given the power to the voices of the weak as through these platforms anyone can voice their opinion, as long as they have an internet connection and a smart device. And talking about social media who don’t know about Twitter. A platform used by the elites of the world as well as the common man.
Twitter has been in the news lately due to its acquisition by the world’s richest man Elon Musk. What this acquisition means and how it’s going to shape the future of Twitter is what we are going to discuss in this article.
Obviously, all social media platforms require an internet connection and with the internet becoming cheap in the last few years, there has been an influx of users on social media. This price change is evident as major companies have slashed their prices e.g Cox internet prices is one example to quote.
Cox is the third-largest cable company in the country and with cost-effective internet services, they are allowing more and more users to join the world of social media.
Some Stats Regarding Twitter
Twitter has 396 million total users which have been up from 330 million, a count it had in 2017, a nearly 20% increase. Out of those 396 million, there are 217 million daily active users today, which is also an increase from 109 million in 2017, a drastic boost of 99%.
On the business end, Twitter had 5 billion in revenue for 2021 which is quite positive from 2.4 billion in 2017 making up an increase of 108%.
But all that glitters is not gold, this increased number of users looks good and shows a steady growth but this is also a fact that this company is suffering in finances, although the overall revenue was up, with that the losses of Twitter have also increased.
According to a rough estimate, Twitter lost 221 million in 2021 which is worse than the 108 million lost in 2017, so the losses are also up by 104% While on the surface, everything looks pretty good for Twitter, where revenue is climbing, users are climbing at a fairly steady pace and even with losses being up for 2021, Twitter was profitable in 2020 and 2019.
But in order to see a clear picture regarding where it stands today, we have to compare it with other social media biggies.
Where does Twitter Stack up with Other Social Media Companies?
A quick reminder, Twitter’s revenue was 5 billion in 2021 and 2.4 billion in 2017, so it witnessed an increase of 108%. In comparison to that let’s take a look at some other famous social media platforms
Facebook is the biggest social media platform with more than 2.9 billion users as of today whereas in 2017 they were 1.3 billion, a difference of 123%. Facebook’s revenue in 2021 was 117 billion compared to 2017 in which it was only 19.4 billion, an increase of 503%. While the profit ratio in 2021 was 39 billion compared to the profit in 2017 which was 15.9 billion, an increase of 82%
Instagram is a major photo-sharing social media platform with 1.1 billion users. It had 700 million in 2017, which shows an increase of 57%. It is important here to note that Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp are all part of the same network now branded as Meta.
Another member of the Meta group WhatsApp has 2 billion users today. It had 1.5 billion in 2017. The user base is up by 33%.
That’s the overview of Facebook (now Meta), which has beaten Twitter on all fronts including profitability, users, and revenue with all three of their products.
Snapchat
Snapchat is also another popular platform that has quite a rich user base of 530 million users today, as compared to 173 million in 2017. So there has been an increase of 206%. This has been due to its innovative disappearing messages and stories feature. In fact, Snapchat was the first medium that introduced this temporary message system.
A technique that has now been incorporated into many social media apps. Snapchat made 4.1 billion in 2021 revenue as compared to 825 million in 2017 and was up by 396%. Speaking of losses, Snapchat only lost 488 million in 2021.
While their losses were 3.4 billion in 2017, as a whole, the losses are down 85%. Snapchat isn’t as profitable or big as Facebook, but again, shows stronger numbers than Twitter. And these two are public companies, which have more than 95% of their revenue
YouTube
The biggest video streaming platform in the world, YouTube made 28 billion in 2021.
Discord
This is also a quite new social media platform and has been gaining quite a momentum amongst gamers. Today Discord has 140 million users and was launched in 2017.
TikTok
Arguably the biggest short content platform in which creators usually create video clips lasting a few seconds, it took that concept from the Vine app and made it bigger and better. Today TikTok has 1 billion users and only exists, due to Twitter’s decision to cut Vine from the company, which was another foolish decision on their part
Conclusion
We’re writing this due to the recent buyout of Twitter by Mr. Musk, just to reiterate the fact that Elon Musk has some serious work to do if he wants to spin this into a strong investment. Because unfortunately Twitter so far has gone from being seen as this innovative tech company, to just more of a dated media brand, which people fight on.
For the idea of him being able to fix this, it’s really a question of whether he can adopt changes that’ll make it fun for people to use. But as interesting as the question is, on the surface, it looks like a weird investment that the world’s richest man did just for a meme. But still, we wish him good luck and hope he can turn Twitter around from the mess it has become lately.
