With 328 million monthly active users, half a billion tweets per day and a valuation of 16 billion dollars, Twitter is one of the biggest social media networking and news site in the world. Founded in 2006, Twitter has grown by leaps and bounds and provides a platform for sharing and receiving news in a quick and timely manner with well over 340 million tweets being sent in a day. It is also one of the most visited websites. Twitter is identified internationally by its bird logo popularly known as ‘Larry the bird’ inspired by Larry Bird of the Boston Celtics of NBA.
It is also one of the most visited websites. Twitter is identified internationally by its bird logo popularly known as ‘Larry the bird’ inspired by Larry Bird of the Boston Celtics of NBA.
Being a top brand, Twitter faces stiff competition from other social networking sites. The top 7 twitter competitors are outlined and discussed below:
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Top 7 Twitter Competitors
1) Facebook
Facebook is without a doubt one of the strongest Twitter Competitors. Facebook is a social media site with well over 2 billion monthly active users, revenue worth 27.638 billion dollars and over 20,000 employees. It is one of the social networking sites with an appeal that cannot be easily matched by its competitors. With subsidiary sites such as Instagram, WhatsApp, and messenger, Facebook is by far the largest social media networking site as evidenced by its huge revenue.
Because of its large audience, most businesses have resorted to doing digital marketing of their products and services on the Facebook platform in a bid to reach its many users. Facebook has definitely revolutionized the internet industry.
2) WhatsApp
A subsidiary of Facebook, WhatsApp is an instant messaging social media networking service for smartphones that has taken the internet industry by storm. It has rapidly gained popularity because of its simplicity, instantaneous nature and ease of use. With WhatsApp, a user can use the internet to make video calls and voice calls; send messages, videos, images, documents and even audio files to another user or a group of users. It also has the status feature where the user gets to upload videos and photos for a 24 hours timeline feed.
All data on WhatsApp is also end-to-end encrypted. With 1 billion daily active users, 1.3 billion monthly active users and 55 billion messages sent per day, WhatsApp is rapidly becoming a force to reckon with in the internet industry. In fact, most strategists suggest that Whatsapp will overtake Twitter and Facebook traffic and will become the highest used app in the world. Naturally, this makes Whatsapp one of the strong Twitter Competitors.
3) Snapchat
Snapchat is a multimedia mobile application and image messaging social media site. The main snapchat concept is that the messages and images/pictures are available for only a limited period of time before they are inaccessible (self-deleting nature). Available in 20 languages, snapchat is more popular among the young generation popularly known as the millennials who like exchanging photos of themselves and of places that they have visited or live in.
Snapchat is slowly gaining ground on the market leaders of the internet industry such facebook, twitter and WhatsApp with its 166 million active daily users a figure that is only set to increase with each passing day.
4) Instagram
Also a subsidiary of Facebook, Instagram is a desktop or mobile internet based application that permits its users to upload and share videos and photos either privately or publicly. Available in 33 languages, Instagram enthusiasts can apply digital filters to the images before sharing and can also include their locations by using geotags to let their friends know where they are. Using hashtags, users can link the images to previously shared content on the site. Since its launch in 2010, Instagram has steadily gained popularity with internet users with over 700 million users as of April 2017. This popularity was enhanced even further when Facebook acquired the site back in 2012 for 1 billion dollars.
Billions and billions of images and videos being shared on Instagram on a daily basis are a clear indication that it is widely used and the only way is more growth for the social media site.
5) LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a social networking service that is employment and business-oriented. It operates mainly via websites and mobile apps. It provides a platform for professional networking where potential employers post job openings and potential employees post their curriculum vitae. LinkedIn users create profiles and then invite others to become their connections thereby creating an online professionals network. It is available in 24 languages and is a subsidiary of Microsoft Corporation since the completion of the acquisition for approximately 26.4 billion dollars in December of 2016.
With a revenue of over 3 billion dollars, over 9000 employees and 500 million users, LinkedIn is a giant in the internet industry and with the number of job seekers ever-increasing, the service is only destined for more growth. While it is on the professional side and a bit different network, it still has its fair share of serious individuals – something Twitter also has. Hence it is one of the strongest Twitter Competitors.
6) Pinterest
Pinterest is a social media service that is mobile and web-based. Pinterest makes use of a software system that has been designed in such a way that it unearths information from the internet or World Wide Web by majorly making use of images, videos and to a little extent, GIFs. Launched in 2010 and available in over 23 languages, Pinterest is slowly becoming popular and useful as a collection tool, visual discovery tool and a storage tool for information sourced from the web.
With the fast-growing use of the internet as an information source, Pinterest’s relevance to the internet era cannot be underestimated. Its more than 800 employees and 175 million monthly active users make Pinterest an interesting and exciting prospect both in the near and long-term future.
Specialised Focused Forums – Indirect Competition
7) Reddit
Reddit is a media aggregation, discussion, and web content rating website. Content such as direct links or text posts can be submitted on the website by members registered on Reddit. Users then vote on the submissions either ‘up’ or ‘down’ to determine how they will be positioned on the web page with content submissions that garner the most ‘up’ votes appearing at the top of each category. Submitted content is organized into subreddits which include science, gaming, news, movies, books, fitness et cetera.
With over 230 employees and 542 million monthly users, Reddit has positioned itself as an important player in the internet industry.
8) Quora
Quora is an online site that is question-and-answer based. Quora registered members are allowed to ask questions, answer questions asked by others or organize and edit questions. Collaboration by the members has been made possible through editing of asked questions and/or editing of answers that have been suggested by other members. Quora was founded in 2009 and is available in 5 languages and has 190 million monthly users.
Quora is constantly improving its user-interface to match the demands of its members and its popularity is soaring among academicians who need answers to their plethora of questions.
9) Stack Overflow
Stack overflow is a flagship site of Stack Exchange Network and is a website that is privately held. It is an open alternative to the earlier created sites that offered question and answer services. It was launched in 2008 and has been made available in 5 major languages. Stack overflow users do earn ‘badges’ or reputation points for receiving ‘up’ votes on answers provided to certain questions. Content that is user-generated is licensed under a license known as the creative commons attribute license. With over 5 million users, stack overflow offers a good alternative to the question and answer sites currently available and post itself as one of the top 7 twitter competitors.
The internet era has revolutionized the way a lot of things are done especially in social networking and marketing. Most companies and organizations are making use of the wide coverage the internet offers and this is where sites such as twitter, facebook, Instagram, snap chat et cetera come in handy. The internet keeps getting interesting as information spreads very quickly. It is no longer debatable that the internet has reduced the world to a global village.
What about NYT, The Guardian, The Wall street journal etc.
I left Facebook because I have no respect for founder Mark Zuckerberg or what Facebook has become. I got tired of friends being put in proverbial Facebook Jail because someone at Facebook didn’t agree or couldn’t “VERIFY OR FACT CHECK” the post. So the hunt continues to find a new social media platform for me. Articles like this that compare Facebook to other social platforms does help.
Social media sites like Twitter and Facebook are in support of marxist leftist propaganda, and they flagrantly suppress conservative values and law and order (which is more than half of the voices in this country). We need alternatives that are not flagrantly racist and biased like Twitter and Facebook.