Facebooks Path to Global Social Network Domination
From just a few thousand users in 2004 to 2.7 billion monthly active users (MAUs) in 2020, Facebook is by far the worlds largest social network.

But its massive global footprint did not grow overnight. While Facebook is the most popular social network in many countries, this traction didn’t happen overnight. And in other places, it still has not quite taken off.

To see Facebooks path to domination, we mapped each countrys most popular social network from 2008‒2020. The data was tabulated by Vincenzo Cosenza at Vincos.it by examining annual traffic data from Alexa and SimilarWeb.

Facebook Grows From the Americas to Southeast Asia
What famously started as Mark Zuckerbergs late-night intoxicated project called Facemash—a hot or not type website for students at Harvard University—soon evolved into the worlds predominant social network.

Before 2008, the social network landscape was populated by social network pioneers such as Myspace and Hi5. Googles Orkut was the most popular network in Brazil and India, and Friendster found a foothold in Southeast Asia.

But the Facebook wave came in earnest. By 2009, the social media giant took the title of most popular network for the bulk of the Americas, Europe, South Asia, and Oceania, with Orkut in Brazil being the sole holdout until 2011.

The coronavirus pandemic boosted social media usage around the world, as many people stayed home for weeks or months. Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter are all gaining new users, though not all will benefit equally from 2020s growth.

How many internet users worldwide visit social platforms regularly?

An estimated 3.23 billion people, or 80.7% of internet users worldwide, will use a social network at least once per month in 2020.

Which countries have the largest populations of social media users?

China and India continue to rank first and second. As a result, Asia-Pacific remains the leading region, with 1.89 billion people using social networks in 2020.

Where will the most new users emerge?

China will post the most sizable increase, with 58.3 million more users than in 2019. India will gain 31.8 million social network users, while Brazil will add 10.0 million.

Facebook is often considered the 800-pound gorilla of the social networking market. Its family of apps -- which includes its main app, Instagram, and WhatsApp -- grew its monthly active users 14% year over year to 3.21 billion last quarter. Facebook also shares a near-duopoly with Alphabet's Google in the digital ad market.

However, several major social networks are still growing in Facebooks shadow. Lets take a closer look at three of them, how they withstood competition from Facebook, and what that resilience means for Facebooks long-term prospects.

1. Snapchat
2. Pinterest
3. Tiktok

Adweek continued its acquisition spree this morning with the announcement that it has acquired Social Media Week, the 11-year-old events and content company that provides deep insights and data for brand marketers, media and technology companies.

Many physicians have reported being sexually harassed and personally attacked on social media platforms on the basis of their religion, race or medical recommendations, a new joint study from Northwestern University and the University of Chicago revealed.

While the data were collected before the COVID-19 pandemic, the findings highlight the intensity of online harassment, which the authors stated has intensified since the crisis.

According to a news release, the study found one in four physicians reported being personally attacked on social media, including being barraged by negative reviews, receiving coordinated harassment and threats at work and having personal information shared publicly.

This Might Be What Finally Makes Me Quit Facebook in 2021. It is an Example of What No Company Should Ever Do.

There are a lot of reasons that might persuade someone to quit using Facebook. There are privacy concerns, data leaks, and incendiary content, not to mention the monetization of your personal data. Any one of those reasons should be enough, but most people aren't persuaded to quit Facebook. Most people just keep using it--almost three billion of them every month, in fact.

The real problem, however, is that Facebooks primary goal is to seduce you into spending more time on Facebook through a variety of different features and notifications. Then, it makes it harder and harder to find the setting to opt-out of those features, even if you have no desire to use them.

That, by the way, is my main complaint with Facebook. The company isn't trying to build features that make it better or more convenient for you to use. Instead, it's designing its product solely to make it better and more profitable for Facebook, even when that results in a worse user experience.

As the world faced lockdowns, people restricted themselves to the four walls of their homes, increasing the amount of time they were spending on social media platforms and behind their screens, but this was not necessarily a bad thing. Social media kept the world connected when the harsh reality of the new normal kept everyone physically apart. This magnanimous increase in screen-time presented brands and organizations an opportunity to connect with their audiences like never before. As we look towards 2021, we must understand that 2020 has changed how we will do business forever. Clearly, there are no effective marketing strategies without social media going forward.

In researching the landscape ahead for social media, I spoke with entrepreneur and social media expert Brandon Mimms. Brandon has built over 10 million followers combined across various pages on Instagram, including @USA, @SantaClaus, @Shoes, @NiagaraFalls, and others.

I want to help you avoid those costly and time-consuming mistakes so you can build the business you deserve, serve more people and bring more value into the world. So let's talk about some of the common mistakes people make in social media, how to avoid them and what you should be doing instead so you can maximize your results.

1. Inconsistent posting activity
2. Posting off-brand content
3. Topical
4. Platforms
5. Asking friends to like/follow your page

RSS feeds are great for getting alerted to new articles on your favorite sites. But your personal time should not be taken up with reading work articles. Split your professional and personal subscriptions by adding work feeds to Microsoft Outlook instead.

Managing feeds in Outlook is super easy, although it can only be done in the desktop Outlook client.

Slack is a great communication app, but it can do much more than just hold a back-and-forth conversation between you and your colleagues. Here’s how to keep up with your favorite websites by adding RSS feeds to Slack.

Despite social media feeds and mobile apps, RSS feeds are still one of the easiest and simplest ways to consume the output of a website.

Like SMS and email, RSS feeds are robust, simple, and supported just about everywhere, which is why—like SMS and email—they are likely to be around for a very long time. So if you want to keep an eye on whats published by a website or blog, then RSS feeds are the best way to do it.

Slack allows you to connect as many RSS feeds to whatever channels you like as you want. The first thing you’ll need to do is install the free RSS app from the Slack directory.

There was a time not all that long ago when Facebook was considered to be the absolute pinnacle of social media in general. Because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up being no longer the case without widespread innovation, Facebook has worked quite hard to diversify its offerings. However, recent data suggests that in spite of the fact that this is the case, Facebook has now lost its dominance among key demographics as well as social media users in general.

According to research conducted by the EdisonResearch, two very intriguing statistics have emerged. The first is that Facebook is no longer the social media platform of choice for people between the ages of 12 and 34. This is arguably the single most important demographic out there due to the reason that these are the people that the vast majority of advertisers are going to want to target at any given point in time. Only 21% of users between 12 and 34 years of age say that Facebook is their social media brand of choice.

The fantasy football experts of Yahoo Fantasy reveal their Week 11 tight end rankings.

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The Steelers will make a little NFL history this weekend.

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