The world is becoming smaller as our technology progresses!
And this is not just some random quote from the world’s most popular social media site, Facebook. The world is becoming smaller. We can chat with someone who is miles away from us with just a few taps and a good Network. We have the power of choice on how we want to do this – through the social media apps, or if we want to feel more at ease, through the use of the top social media apps of 2022.
But what is social media?
Simply put, social media is any computer-based technology that enables people to socialize virtually. This includes media like video sharing platforms, text and image sharing platforms, and messaging platforms.
And the apps that enable the user base to access and use social media platforms are called social media apps. As you may have guessed by this definition, social media apps are not limited to Facebook and WhatsApp. It includes video-sharing platforms like Youtube, Twitch, and TikTok as well.
Top Social Media Apps in 2022
Regarding the best social media apps of 2022, some common guesses are Facebook and Instagram. But do you know the names of all the popular social media platforms for 2022?
Some of you may already have your pick of the top, and some of you may not. So, we have ranked 10 of the most popular social media platforms worldwide based on their active userbase. Let us know your guesses in the comments below. Now, do you want to know what they are? If you do, let’s get started~
1) Facebook
- Monthly Active User base: 2.93 Billion
- Downloads: 5 Billion +
Facebook is one of the more obvious entries on this list. Unsurprisingly, the application of this popular social media site is also at the top of this list. With the world population nearing 8 billion users, it is unsurprising to have 2.74 billion users. This app is smooth, fast, uses comparatively less data, and you can do a wide range of things on this app as well.
This application has got everything, be it sharing memes, posting your thoughts, promoting your business, or just sharing a snippet of your daily life . On top of that, besides a few private images, you can download them all. While the downloadability of media is limited to images, with a bit of a detour, you can download virtually everything.
Along with this, Facebook is also one of the mediums for social media marketers. It is helpful for professional networking and social media marketers as well. This can be done through the Facebook Market place to buy/sell products, along with Facebook jobs searching for employment.
No wonder Facebook is at the top of the popular social media platforms of 2022. And let’s not forget that it has been downloaded over 5 billion times (although quite a few are re-downloads).
2) YouTube
- Monthly Active User base: 2.6 Billion
- Downloads: 10 Billion +
Video streaming platforms are considered social media platforms. This is why this app is one of the most popular social media apps of 2022. Anyone can guess why YouTube is on this list of popular social media platforms of 2022. YouTube is the primary source of information and entertainment for the new generations.
While there are alternative sources of entertainment and video-sharing platforms. it will take quite a while for them to get as many userbases as YouTube. You can search and watch the videos on this platform/app with a little effort. Along with this, you can also create your channel and share your videos. You can earn money from this video streaming platform if you follow a small procedure. There are tons of people who are professional YouTubers and are completely reliant on this platform. Figuring out How to make money from YouTube/ Monetize YouTube? can be complicated, but it can be done.
On the other hand, if you are not among these creators, you can simply search and watch the videos. If you want to save the videos for future use, you can download them or save them to a playlist. Is there any reason to doubt why YouTube is one of the top social media apps in 2022?
3) WhatsApp
- Monthly Active User base: 2.0 Billion
- Downloads: 5 Billion +
A few years ago, WhatsApp used to be a separate company. However, currently, it is a property of Facebook (recently renamed to Meta). But that being said, its relation to facebook ends here. While this application is indeed under the ownership of Facebook, the function cannot be more different. Facebook is meant for sharing thoughts and ideas, while WhatsApp primarily means Instant Messenging (IM).
Along with sending instant texts in this application, you can also send voice messages and images. If you want to send documents but are too lazy to send an email, you can just add a contact on WhatsApp – given that the receiving party also has this application.
But that’s not all; you can create group chats and do all these things in a group chat. Just be careful which group chats you join because some can be quite annoying, especially those filled with trolls. With 2 billion users and many more inactive ones, WhatsApp is worthy of being on this list of top social media apps in 2022.
4) Facebook Messenger
- Monthly Active User base: 1.3 Billion
- Downloads: 5 Billion +
No, Facebook Messenger is not the same as Facebook. This one is meant for sharing messages with your contacts on Facebook. In simple words, Facebook Messenger is the app that deals with the “Chat” aspect of this popular social media platform.
As with all messaging platforms, Facebook Messenger allows you to send texts, images, voices, and videos. Group messaging is also rather popular on this social media app. On top of these, you can do live audio and video calls through this social media app.
While many messing apps allow you to do these things, the thing that pushes this particular messaging app to the top 5 of this list is that it is connected with Facebook. As you have a Facebook account, you can chat with everyone who is connected with you on it. Add the fact that you now have a messenger for PC; we can only see the rise of this app shortly.
5) Instagram
- Monthly Active User base: 1.393 Billion
- Downloads:1 Billion +
Now let’s talk about the cousin of Facebook who is into modelling. Instagram is one of the popular social media platforms – it is what models and their followers primarily use. Due to this very reason, this social media is somewhat limited. Don’t get us wrong, you can share memes and all sorts of images in this app. But you cannot download them unless you use some third party.
And indeed, you can share videos on Instagram, but the length and the size of the videos are severely limited. But there is a way around this – IGTV, a place on Instagram specifically meant for sharing videos. The good thing about the Instagram app is that you can easily open up an account or connect it to Facebook. On top of that, while this app is indeed primarily meant for image sharing, you can chat in this app as well. Besides these, if you want to apply filters to your photo, Instagram has a feature where you can download its filters and use them offline. Plus, this app also provides you with a basic image editor.
While the image editor is not as good as the default ones, it still is good enough for some last-moment editing. These are very good reasons why Instagram is one of the top social media apps in 2022.
6) Weixin/Wechat
- Monthly Active User base: 1.288 Billion
- Downloads: 100 Million+
What do you get when you want a WhatsApp but, simultaneously, not be distinct on your own? You get Wechat. The basic concept is indeed similar to WhatsApp. However it is different enough to be a distinct app on its own. Made in China, this is the primary messaging app there.
WeChat allows you to send texts, share images and videos, and voice chats to your contacts. This social media application can do these in either one-to-one messaging or one-to-many (group chat). What sets this messaging platform apart from the rest is its ability to share your location in real-time and the location of any place without exiting this app. This feature can be a huge bonus to those who need to share location frequently.
Alongside this, you get the classic messaging application features like stickers and app-specific emojis. When we combine all of its features plus its active users, we can see why it is one of the top social media apps in 2022.
7)TikTok
- Monthly Active User base: 1 Billion
- Downloads: 1 Billion+
Yes, TikTok is a social media app similar to how Youtube. It allows virtually anybody to share their ideas and thoughts via video. While TikTok is mostly known for its cringe content, and dangerous challenges there are some really good ones in there as well.
You can also create and share your videos and join the TikTok partnership program. Tiktok even provides its users with famous dialogues and music clips to make this easy. You can lipsync to your favourite dialogues, dance to your favourite music, or create your content on this popular social media platform- the choice is yours.
On top of all these features, you can also earn money from Tiktok. For this, you need to have a minimum of 10,000 followers and 1 million views over the past month. After that, you can either ask for sponsorships like on Youtube or live-stream your videos to get donations in the form of stickers.
This social media app takes two good video streaming platforms and combines them. You just have to be careful that the average video limit on Tiktok is 15 seconds. You can extend the time by combining two or more videos to have a maximum video length of 1 minute.
8) QQ
- Monthly Active User base: 552.1 Million
- Downloads: 560+ Million
QQ is the WhatsApp of China. This social media app is made for Chinese people by Chinese people. While you can use this app in another language, the default language for QQ is Chinese, so it would be hard for you to use it without understanding Chinese or having Chinese nearby.
That being said, once you get past the initial hurdle, this app becomes an asset for you. This app have international live chat translators and other features like social games.
You can easily use this app for three purposes – shopping, movies, and chat. Of course, QQ has all the basic messaging app features, including text, image, voice, and group chats. These are why QQ is on this list of top social media platforms for 2022.
You can easily use this app for three purposes – shopping, movies, and chat. Of course, QQ has all the basic messaging app features, including text, image, voice, and group chats. These are why QQ is on this list of top social media platforms for 2022.You can easily use this app for three purposes – shopping, movies, and chat. Of course, QQ has all the basic features of messaging apps as well including text, image, voice, and group chats. These are the reasons why QQ is on this list of top social media platforms for 2022.
9) Telegram
- Monthly Active User base: 500 Million
- Downloads: 1 Billion +
What does Telegram have that makes it one of the top social media apps in 2022? Well, besides the classic features of any messaging app like text, voice, and group chats, along with image and video sharing, it has some features that none of the other IM apps has. These features are Message Scheduling, Personal Cloud Storage, and Chat Folders.
You can create Chat Folders on Discord and get personal cloud storage on Google +, but these are just about the only features on these social media apps. In Telegram, you can find all of these in one place. Besides this, you can even save messages on a private folder that only you can access on Telegram.
While Telegram is a relatively new app launched in 2013, due to these features, it has become one of the top social media apps in 2022.
10) Snapchat
- Monthly Active User base: 557 Million
- Downloads: 1 Billion +
Snapchat is one of those social media apps that take privacy very seriously. If you haven’t personalized your settings, the messages are deleted as soon as you open them. This is one of the defining features of Snapchat. Even after personalizing the settings, you will only be able to view the messages for 24 hours once they are sent. If the messages are in the form of snaps (images and videos taken on the spot), you can only view them twice before they become locked.
If you want to save these snaps by taking a screenshot, Snapchat will notify these as well. The only chink in the mail is that it doesn’t notify when one is using screen recording software. But that is a small chink in the big armour for privacy that this app provides to ensure the safety of the user’s privacy.
On top of all these, you can share videos in the form of stories similar to Facebook stories or can view them in the form of a spotlight, similar to how TikTok shows its recommended videos and leave a heart there. Using these features of high privacy and open content, Snapchat has become one of the most popular social media platforms in 2022.
Conclusion,
Depending on the active user base and the total number of downloads, the entries on these lists are constantly changing. The position of apps also depends on how the entries are ranked on. These social media apps are ranked based on their total active user base on this list. But they would have easily switched positions if this list was ranked based on total downloads.
Hope this was helpful to you. And since as always, thank you for reading till the end.