List of Social Media Apps

Social media apps are very common today. There are different types of social media applications available, and the users choose them based on their requirements. Every day hundreds of new social media apps and websites are launched, which have some new and innovative features, and they try to make their reach more to the users. To understand different social media applications, let us understand the term social media. Social media refers to any computer-based service that allows users to create, share or access content through a virtual network.

There are innumerable social media apps available that have different features, and choosing the right application that fulfills our need is a major task and sticking to a particular app is much more difficult. Social media provides a great opportunity to explore new things, and some apps also help us to expand our business and introduce our product to millions of other users of the app. With the help of social media, one can connect with individuals who share a common interest and can get rid of boredom. Many use social media to show their talents to other people. Such kinds of people are known as content creators, and the people who use the applications to entertain themselves or learn some skills are known as content consumers. Nowadays, many people are attracted to social media to introduce their business to the people, so many applications have made a separate business-friendly interface so that the companies can directly get connected with their customers and provide them better services and also collect their feedback to improve their products and services.

Many companies collaborate with social media networks so that they can get aware of what the customers want from the company. Companies collect reviews and feedbacks from various people, and the data is used for improving the products and services of the particular company. Many companies nowadays prefer social media instead of television for advertising their product or service as advertising on social media is cheaper than advertising on television, and most importantly, on social media, companies can target the customers who are interested in their product/service. Many social media applications are designed in such a way that they only show the advertisements that the user might be interested in. Here is a list of the 12 most popular social media applications.

1. Facebook

Facebook is the most popular social media app in the world. Facebook was initially launched with the name of FaceMash in 2003, but later in 2004, the name was changed to Facebook. Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg, his college roommates, and fellow Harvard University students. Initially, the membership of Facebook was limited only to the students at Harvard, but as time passed, Facebook became popular and made its reach to other universities also. When Facebook was newly launched, it had just a few features like adding basic information and adding pictures, but later Facebook came with new and exciting features like introducing a like button, adding community posts, tagging friends, adding comments to a post and much more. On 30^th December 2004, Facebook completed its one millionth registration target. Today the app has around 2.89 billion monthly active users. Every day 500,000 new users join Facebook. The company has recently changed its name to Meta as the company is planning to expand its reach beyond social media.

2. Twitter

The company has its headquarters in San Francisco, USA. Twitter was founded by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams. The current CEO of the company is Parag Agrawal. In the app or website of the social networking service, the users interact with messages known as tweets. The users registered with the app can post, like, or retweet tweets, but the users not registered can only view the tweets that are publicly available. Initially, the word limit of a tweet was 140 characters, but now the word limit has been doubled to 280. Audio or video tweets can be of a maximum of 140 seconds. The monetizable daily active users are 166 million, with US alone having around 66 million users. Data shows that more than 500 million tweets are sent per day on Twitter.

3. Whatsapp Messanger

Whatsapp is an instant messaging app owned by Meta. Whatsapp allows its users to send text and voice messages, make video calls, send documents, images, location, and much more. Whatsapp accounts are linked with phone numbers, and the user needs to verify the mobile number by SMS. The linked mobile number can be replaced by any other phone number with the new feature launched by Whatsapp. Whatsapp has its application which is available on both Android and ios. Whatsapp has also launched its desktop app, which allows users to use Whatsapp services on their computers as long as their mobile has an active internet connection.

The application was founded in 2009 by Brian Acton and Jan Koum, who were former employees of Yahoo. When Whatsapp was newly developed in 2009, it was only available in the Apple store on iPhone, but later in 2010, a new Whatsapp version was made for the Android OS. In 2013 Whatsapp had around 400 million active users, and it was valued at USD 1.5 Billion. In 2014 Whatsapp was sold to Facebook, now Meta, for $19 billion. In August 2014, Whatsapp had over 600 million users and over 30 billion messages per day, and these numbers were increasing rapidly. Now the application has over 1.5 billion active users.

4. Telegram

Telegram is an instant messaging app. The app allows users to send text messages, videos, documents, and other files with end-to-end encryption. Telegram was launched in 2013 by Nikolai and Pavel Durov. In October 2013, the application had over 1 lakh daily active users. Telegram became very popular in 2014, and its daily active users were 15 million. From 2016-2019 Telegram had a boost in the number of new registrations and had over 300 million active monthly users. Today Telegram has more than 550 million active users. Telegrams accounts are linked to phone numbers, and at the time of registration, the user has to enter the mobile number and verify it by SMS. The linked mobile number can be changed at any time, and the account can be linked with multiple devices, and users can receive notifications and messages on all of the linked devices if they want.

5. Youtube

Youtube is a social media platform owned by Google. Youtube was launched in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim, who were former employees of PayPal. Later in 2005, Youtube was bought by Google for $1.65 billion. The company has its headquarters in California, USA. The CEO of the company is Susan Wojcicki. In the initial days, Youtube started its office above a Japanese restaurant in California which was very small. In June 2007, Youtube started its broadcasting service in 89 other countries. Initially, the upload limit of any video on youtube was 10 min which was later removed.

In 2008 users were able to upload videos in 480P, which was increased to 1080P in 2009. Nowadays, one can upload a video of any quality and even upload a 4k or 360-degree video. Nowadays, youtube is very popular among content creators as they are given rewards on the basis of their subscriber count, and they are paid a good amount of money based on the number of people watching their content.

6. Instagram

Instagram is a social networking site/app which allows users to upload photos or videos and edit them with the various filters available on Instagram. Users can tag a person in a picture or a video and can also use hashtags. Users have the privilege to set their accounts as Public or Private. Users can browse other content by tags or locations, and they can even like or comment on a photo or video. Instagram also has a status feature in which users can post photos or videos which can be seen by all or only by selected followers based on the user's settings; the status remains visible only for 24 hours.

Instagram was launched in 2010 for iOS and gained popularity rapidly; it gained around one million registered users in less than two months. In 2018 Instagram completed its 1 billion registered users. In 2012, Facebook acquired Instagram for around USD 1billion. On April 3, 2012, Instagram was launched for Android too.

7. Snapchat

Snapchat was created by Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy, and Reggie Brown, who are former students of Stanford University. The current CEO of Snapchat is Evan Spiegal. Snapchat is mainly popular among users for its extraordinary features, which make a photo or video sent by a user known as snaps available for the recipient for a short time. The app has a story feature in which users can post pictures or videos, which will be available for 24 hours. The app also allows advertisers to show their brands in the form of a video for a short time.

Snapchat is very popular among teenagers, and the app has around 293 million daily active users. Initially, in 2011 Snapchat was available only on iOS, but in 2012 the android version of the application was launched. In January 2018, Snapchat introduced end-to-end encryption for photos and videos, and it is planning to introduce end-to-end encryption for text messages soon.

8. Koo

Koo, which was earlier known as Ku Koo Ku, was launched by Bengaluru based startup in March 2020. After the app was launched, around 26 lakh people downloaded the application from the play store. The number of users of the application increased rapidly after a controversy between Twitter and the Indian government. Many users shifted to Koo, and now Koo has around 15 million active users. The company has its headquarters in Bengaluru, Karnataka, and the company is estimated to grow up to $100 million.

The app is a good alternative to twitter for Indians as it is similar to twitter. It allows users to share their opinions and start a discussion in Indian languages. The users of the application can follow anyone of their choice, share updates and opinions, follow any personality or people of their choice and see what's trending on the internet. As it is an Aatmanirbhar (Make in India) initiative Indian government and other government departments have their official handles on the app, and they also encourage people to use this application.

9. Hike Messanger

Hike Messanger, popularly known as Hike sticker chat, is an instant messaging app. The application was launched on 12^th December 2012 by Kavin Bharti Mittal. The hike became very popular due to its extraordinary feature, which allows users to send limited offline messages to other Hike users. To register on the application, the user has to sign in with his mobile number and verify it with a one-time password sent to him on the mobile number. The app has Hike moji stickers which can be customized according to the user's choice.

The app became the first social media app to start a mobile payment service in India. Most of the Hike Messanger users are below the age of 25, and to keep them engaged in the application; Hike has come up with innovative ideas like allowing the users to change the chat background at their end and the other user's end. In 2019 Hike launched a desktop version of the application so that the users can chat on their personal computers.

10. ShareChat

It is an Indian social media app developed by Mohalla Tech Pvt Ltd in 2015. The founders of this application are Ankush Sachdeva, Bhanu Pratap Singh, and Fahrid Ahsan. The social media app has more than 50 million content creators and 160 million active users. Earlier, ShareChat was only a content-sharing platform, but later, in 2016, it allowed the users to generate their content and publish it on the application. Mohalla Tech Pvt Ltd has its headquarters in Bangalore, Karnataka, and is valued at USD 3.7 billion. The current CEO of ShareChat is Ankush Sachdeva.

ShareChat earned around INR 4 crore in the year 2020. To register in the ShareChat application, the user has to enter the mobile number and verify the same with a one-time password sent on the mobile number entered. By signing in to ShareChat, users can generate their own content or can send photos, videos of the app with the use of any other application like whatsapp, Facebook, Instagram, etc. This app allows users to connect with friends or other people, but the users don't have a facility to chat on the application.

11. Chingari

It is an Indian-based social media platform. The application was launched in 2018 and was founded by Sumit Ghosh and Biswatma Nayak. It is a video-sharing application in which users can add visual effects, dance, add voice-over to movie scenes, and other dialogues. In this application, users can upload and download videos in more than 20 different languages. In July 2020, when the Indian government banned the Tiktok app, the users were looking for an alternative, and as the Chingari application is somewhat similar to TikTok, it became popular, and in July, more than 1 million people downloaded the application. These numbers kept on rising, and by July end, the application had over 25 million users. In February 2021 Chingari app completed the mark of 50 million users. Apart from uploading and downloading videos, users can chat with their friends, interact with new people, browse through feeds, and can also create their own content. Chingari pays a good amount of money to the content creators on the basis of the views their video gets.

12. Josh

This app was launched in the year 2020, by Dailyhunt which is a daily news application. This application has videos of all categories such as entertainment, comedy, cooking, dancing, motivational, pets, and many more. The users can also create their own content and post it on the app. Josh app also has a duet video feature in which users can record their video, which will follow along with another person's video. This app allows the user to share the videos of the Josh app with their followers and to other people through whatsapp or Facebook. The video feed in this application displays the content according to the user's choice. There are also some daily challenges in which the users can participate and earn exciting prizes. There are also some special tools for content creators that help them to improve the quality of their content and also to increase their followers. After the ban of the TikTok app, the short video category of applications saw a surge in the number of registered users, and Josh is one of them. As this application is made in India, it is among the most popular short video app used in India. Currently, this app has more than 115 million monthly users and around 56 million daily active users.