Biggest, most influential social media services and how they make money

According to the site Statista, as of October 2018, Facebook, YouTube and WhatsApp were the most used social media outlets, all boasting at least 1.5 billion active accounts. In this order, Facebook comes on top with 2.2 billion active accounts, YouTube has a huge 1.9 billion and WhatsApp has 1.5 billion active accounts. Other notable and potentially surprising names include; Instagram with 1 billion active users, Tik Tok with a whopping 500 million accounts and Snapchat with only 291 million accounts. 

Social media sites need to make money to maintain their sites and expenses. Originally, sites would have relied on venture capitalists to make their money. These venture capitalists are investors making a bet that the site they're investing in will become popular and will eventually find a way to make money from the success. However, since 2007 there has been an economy recession and less people are willing to invest large amounts of money in to sites, meaning the social media platforms have had to find other way to cover running costs. These outlets rely heavily on allowing companies and other apps to advertise on their sites, and premium offers to make their profits. They do this by getting companies and big brands to pay for their advertisement to be shown and for celebs to shout out or model their products. These social media companies also pay popular celebrities to post on their site, to attract more users and therefore more advertisers. For many outlets such as Facebook and Instagram this is a common case. However other Social media services such as LinkedIn, Tinder and Ning, they offer premium services at a monthly cost. These services often involve a 'benefit' to the user, spreading their account further and often removing the adverts.

Social media is proving to be more and more influential. We often subconsciously develop a want or a characteristic to 'fit in' with those around us. Common examples can be developing an accent if you have moved to a new area or buying an item because a lot of people have it in that moment. This is because the brain anciently, and instinctively does not want to be called out for being different and odd. This can be directly linked to the amount of time we spend on social media, often seeing the same products being promoted by different celebrities and companies. The longer we spend on these apps, subconsciously surrounding ourselves with these advertisements, The greater we are influenced into believing the benefits of such products and wanting them.