Largest Mobile Social Networks Today by Size of User Base

Facebook has just bought Instagram for a cool 1 Billion dollars. Congratulations to both. But the news seems to be suggesting Instagram is the biggest mobile social network. It is far from that. It may be the biggest social network purely for mobile - in the USA - but that is hardly the biggest in the world. I became curious to find a convenient list of the biggest social networks on mobile, thinking surely such a list exists somewhere - this being the hottest focal point and future direction of the hottest industry right now. I was surprised such a list doesn't exist (or at least I was unable to find one easily). I think a good page should be set up at Wikipedia but while we await that, lets collect my best understanding of the biggest social networks as measured by their mobile users. This includes both 'pure' mobile social networks and the most recent counts of the largest online social networks by their mobile user base. No surprise who shows up on top, either..

LARGEST SOCIAL NETWORKS ON MOBILE, END OF 2011

Social Network (Owner) . . Users . . . Home Base

Facebook mobile . . . . . . . 425 M . . . USA
Mobile QQ (Tencent)  . . . . 200 M . . . China
Sina (Weibo) . . . . . . . . . . 150 M . . . China
RenRen  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 M . . . China
iMessenger (Apple)  . . . . . . 58 M . . . USA
Mig33 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 M . . . Singapore
Twitter mobile . . . . . . . . . . 55 M . . . USA
Blackberry Messenger . . . . 50 M . . . Canada
Mxit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 M . . . South Africa
Nimbuzz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 M . . . Netherlands
Skype Mobile (Microsoft) . . 40 M . . . USA
Gree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 M . . . Japan
Instagram . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 M . . . USA
Mobile Cyworld (SK)  . . . . . 25 M . . . South Korea
Mobage Town (DeNA)  . . . . 25 M . . . Japan
Mocospace . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 M . . . USA
Whatsapp . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 M . . . USA
FourSquare . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 M . . . USA
Mixi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  15 M . . . Japan
MyGamma (Buzz City)  . . . .  5 M . . . Singapore
Flirtomatic  . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4 M . . . UK
Itsmy  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 M . . . Germany
Funbook (XL)  . . . . . . . . . . .  2 M . . . Indonesia
Frenclub . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  1 M . . . Malaysia

Source: TomiAhonen Consulting Estimates April 2012
The above information may be freely shared

Please note, that this is a preliminary and incomplete listing. Secondly, before you complain that Facebook has over 800 million users etc, remember, I am counting the MOBILE users.

Thirdly, I would welcome any and all corrections and revisions, especially any mobile social networking services that are missing from the above listing. There are many national and regional social networks that are almost impossible for me to discover and find, especially when their native language is other than English.. So please accept the above list as 'preliminary and incomplete' as of 10 April, I hope to be able to add a lot more to it, as I post this blog and also request assistance from my Twitter followers and the Forum Oxford community.

A few special mentions. I could not find any official number for Skype Mobile users. I did find Android and iOS Skype app download numbers. From the iOS number I arbitrarily assigned Apple's iPhone percentage ie 58% as in the strict definition of 'mobile' the iPod Touch is a portable/pocketable device, not a 'mobile' device, and the iPad is an ultraportable PC but not a 'mobile' device, only true cellular permanently connected pocketable devices (ie those that 'ring in the pocket') fit the definition of a mobile device. Hence I only count iPhones not iPads or iPod Touch's and used that iPhone percentage of all iOS devices. And I assumed that of all Skype apps ever downloaded, still 90% are in use on smartphones (total wild guess, I have no better data). Same with the iMessenger number as 58% from total Apple official iMessenger users, except obviously am counting 100% of the iPhone iMessenger users being active as its a relatively new service vs Skype thats been around much longer.

But yes, as a service to all who are intersted in social networking, or mobile, or mobile social networking haha, please accept the above as a listing of the biggest social networks today, by the count of their mobile phone based users.

And one shameless plug, as it is directly relevant to this blog posting. For those who want to read more about the fastest-growing part of the digital space, where the biggest money is being made right now, you may want to read the first book that focused only on the mobile side of social networking, Tomi Ahonen Pearls Vol 2: Mobile Social Networking. The ebook runs 173 pages and costs only 9.99 Euros. Take a look at the book description here, the only place where the ebook is sold: Tomi Ahonen Pearls Vol 2: Mobile Social Networking.

Comments

[Phani Raj K]

Hi Tomi,
you should add SMSGupshup from India to the list , it has close to 50 million users . see this
http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2011-08-31/news/29949392_1_valuations-venture-capital-helion-ventures

[wesley]

Until 1 wk ago this was an iPhone only developer getting bought for 1b. Is there any pre ident like this for any Symbian only developer?

[@martingicheru]

No idea about Samsung ChatON numbers, but I think it should be way past a million by now. Same as 2Go

[Sander van der Wal]

Nimbuzz is from the Netherlands and has 50 million users? Possible, but as there are just 16 million Dutch, most of those 50 million ain't Dutch.

[virgil]

What, you say Google+ doesn't have 1M mobile users? I find that very hard to believe....

And as others say... if BBM is a "social netowrk", then why not include iMessage and gtalk? (every sanctioned Android phone out there has gtalk on it).

@wesley - and what happened 1 week ago that triggered this purchase? Yes, admit it, the coincidence is too high - Instagram wasn't bought because it was an iOS thing.... it was bought because it was a multi-platform success. Had it remained on iOS exclusive, it would've been a minor player, ignored by pretty much everyone.
Just watch Instapaper vanish into oblivion, that developer swore that he'll never move out of iOS.

[Cathal Dempsey]

LinkedIn ?

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Thank you for all the comments. Please keep in mind if you suggest social networks haha, like Linked In or G+ etc, we need official stats on the MOBILE users on those networks. And the installed base of some app that ships with a handset is not the same as active user base, we need an active user base. Like BBM, the total installed base of Blackberries is far greater than the actual active user base of Blackberry Messenger, but RIM tells us it is 'over 50 million'. For iMessage I will try to find a mobile user number, I believe it works across all iOS devices, doesn't it, so the total iMessage user count is too large

Keep the discussion going on, I will return with comments soon

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[wesley]

@ Virgil- if thats the case then provide me with a similar Android app developer. As of this purchase Instagram is 80% iOS, can you provide ONE example of Andriod dominated Developer with this kind of valuation?

@ Tomi - still waiting for a Symbian example...

My point is that for all the talk about market share, everyone knows where the money is. A developer in less than 2 yrs choose the IOS platform nearly exclusively and turn it into 1billion!!!

That could never and would never happen on ANY OTHER mobile platform

[Mardus]

March 26, 2011 (a year ago): Grindr announced that it had officially hit 3.5 million users in 192 countries across the globe.[The reference link at Wikipedia was dead :]

[Mikko Martikainen]

The rise of Instagram valuation is indeed staggering. I'm actually very curious if there are any other examples of companies gaining valuation so fast?

@Tomi

I believe Twitter mobile user base should be at 77 million by now, if we assume the same percentage of mobile users as reported before (55%, according to http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/02/28/us-twitter-advertising-idINTRE81R1ZO20120228 ). The latest info on total user base is at 140 million according to their company blog from March 21st.

Also, how about separating purely mobile social networks from those that are also accessible via "normal" web? Or at least showing the percentage of user base form mobile devices, I believe that would be quite interesting to see, and probably a good indication of the future growth pattern of the social networks. My hypothesis is that the social networks that have the highest mobile user percentage also grow the fastest, or at least faster than those that are predominantly accessed via non-mobile devices.

[DS]

@virgil
> Just watch Instapaper vanish into oblivion, that developer swore that he'll never move out of iOS.
If you hurt yourself, somebody can come up and save you against your will...
http://www.instafetch.com/
Their android client is top noth, better than competing read me later.

[kevin]

So it looks like apps can have tremendous value.

Also, iMessenger should be iMessage.

[chithanh]

Google+ app for Android reports more than 10 million downloads.

[Stoli89]

Surprised that fring is not on this list.

[AlanC]

Hi there,

also missed here is RockeTalk - A native Mobile social network with 15.5m users...across India and south asia

[dangli]

Hello Tomi,
Just out of curiosity, why are you listing iMessage as a Mobile Social Network?
With such a reasoning should you not list SMS and MSISDN with its total global population then?

To me iMessage is more an SMS type service than a Social Network. So if listing that you should list SMS.

[cycnus]

On What's App.

Nokia also promoting What's App like crazy to combat BBM, not to mention a lot of Blackberry user also use What's App.

So, I'm very surprised that the What's App number is very low.

[anon]

Latest numbers on MocoSpace are over 25 million: http://www.pocketgamer.biz/r/PG.Biz/MocoSpace/feature.asp?c=36607

[Kai Lukoff]

I love this initiative, and wanted to share my two cents.

1) Apples-to-oranges comparisons. As I understand, Facebook counts MAU, which makes its 425m even more impressive. A lot of the other services simply count total registered users--and there's a huge difference. I'd suggest counting MAU where possible. Not all companies provide that, but I'd rather estimate MAU than list MAU and registered side-by-side.

2) On the Chinese Numbers
I'd like to share a few thoughts on the Chinese numbers, which, after all, make up 3 of your top 4.

Mobile QQ (Tencent) - 200m | This number is too low. 200m is only for Mobile Game Hall, not QQ Messenger. QQ Messenger should be significantly higher than this: it has a total of 721m actives, of which I think ~40% could be estimated as mobile users. So 288m. See: http://www.tencent.com/en-us/content/at/2011/attachments/20120314.pdf http://www.marbridgeconsulting.com/marbridgedaily/2012-02-08/article/53481/mobile_qq_game_registered_users_exceeds_200_mln

Sina Weibo - 150m | This number is way too high. Sina Weibo has about 30m total MAU, of which maybe 60% are mobile users. So 20m MAU. The 150m number is misleading.

Renren - 61m | This number is also too high. Renren has about 35m MAU, of which last I read 50% are mobile users. So I think 17m or so is a better figure.

3) The Missing Chinese Social Networks
The extended QQ empire: QQ by Tencent has a whole suite of mobile products that all support log-in via a QQ ID log-in: QQ Mobile Game Hall, QZone, Pengyou, Tencent Weibo, etc. I don't think I'd count these as independent social networks (they're all heavily dependent and synergetic with QQ Messenger). See: http://techrice.com/2011/05/24/inside-tencent-weibo-ichinastock-slideshare/

One major Chinese social network you're missing is Weixin by Tencent, which claims 50m registered, 25m active. It's Tencent's shot at the white-collar smartphone market, so it stands further apart from the rest of the QQ empire. It's like a much improved What's App, with far richer social features. This one is a big deal. See: http://techrice.com/2011/12/13/2012-will-be-the-year-of-weixin/

Other Chinese networks that are missing: Douban, Jiayuan, Jiepang, Qieke, Weidiling, and Momo.

Kai Lukoff (卢凯）
www.techrice.com

[Air Yeezy]

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