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Youtube Social Networks The Internet

YouTube Is Once Again the Most Popular Social Media Platform (engadget.com) 42

According to a new report, YouTube has dethroned Facebook to become the most popular social media platform. Engadget reports: According to the report, YouTube and Facebook are the most widely used platforms. But of the two, only YouTube is still growing, increasing its share of users from 73 percent of adults in 2019, to 81 percent in 2021. Facebook's numbers, meanwhile, remained unchanged from 2019 at 69 percent. "Facebook's growth has leveled off over the last five years, but it remains one of the most widely used social media sites among adults in the United States," Pew writes in its report.

Flat growth wasn't unique to just Facebook, either. According to Pew, the only other platform to see "statistically significant" growth since 2019 was Reddit, which grew from 11 percent in 2019 to 18 percent in 2021. "This represents a broader trend that extends beyond the past two years in which the rapid adoption of most of these sites and apps seen in the last decade has slowed," Pew says.
The report also found that 49 percent of Facebook users say they check the site multiple times a day, compared to just over a third of YouTube users visiting the platform more frequently than once a day.

Another interesting insight is that YouTube is the most dominant platform among 18 to 29-year-olds at 95 percent, followed by Instagram with 71 percent, Facebook at 70 percent, Snapchat with 65 percent, and TikTok at 48 percent.
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YouTube Is Once Again the Most Popular Social Media Platform

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  • Not only that (Score:5, Insightful)

    by burtosis ( 1124179 ) on Wednesday April 07, 2021 @10:11PM (#61249326)
    It’s comment section also causes the least brain damage per hour of reading. The least!
  • Youtube for anything in weeks.
    • by Ostracus ( 1354233 ) on Thursday April 08, 2021 @12:36AM (#61249680) Journal

      I don't think Facebook would ever give me a free course on DevOps [youtu.be] like Youtube does. Or an understanding of artificial life. [youtu.be] Or even an understanding of death [youtu.be] in an animated movie.

      As for Reddit it's main selling point is diversity of forums under one umbrella. Behavior is about what one would expect in a modern online forum.

      • All platforms have their downfalls, but I like YT enough that I pay for the ad-free subscription. Not many other platforms can I find relevant stuff, be it how to yank out a taillight assembly on a vehicle and put it back without damage, to decent product reviews (although most are paid, you at least get to see the item in action), to just interesting stuff like another mousetrap review, or relevant discussions. I can't really travel right now, so some people's travel vlogs are worth watching.

        FB doesn't h

        • by trabby ( 4123953 )

          They have not really stopped the russian content farms though, that same problem applies to facebook as well of course.

      • Or any other platform would give me for free intelligent 4+ times weekly assessments of SARS-COV2 - TWIV https://www.youtube.com/c/Vinc... [youtube.com] or DEFCONConference https://www.youtube.com/user/D... [youtube.com] or Fermilab explaining (almost) measurement of new physics https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] or SpaceX practicing lofting grain silos https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] or follow Perseverance on mars with JPL https://www.youtube.com/c/NASA... [youtube.com] or get a crash course in the biggest ideas in the universe from Sean Carrol h [youtube.com]

        • YouTube is great, I just hope that it continues that way and is not destroyed by capitalism or our genocidal politics.

          Right now I'm using Youtube to watch the proceedings in the trial of Derek Chauvin. It is as if I am a member of the jury and getting to hear the witness testimony for myself. I can also hear analysis and insight about the proceedings from former law enforcement officers. I love being able to circumvent what passes as modern day 'journalism' and going directly to the source material myself.

          But Youtube needs competition. They need a reason to think twice before they burn their small independent content produ

  • YouTube is the biggest leper of the bunch!

  • by ktakki ( 64573 ) on Wednesday April 07, 2021 @10:47PM (#61249438) Homepage Journal

    Maybe I'm unclear on the concept, but I thought "social media" was defined by the graph database model. YT is subscribe/watch/comment and a one-to-many model derived from broadcast media (the Tube part of YouTube; remember cathode ray tubes?).

    FB and Twitter are creatures of the internet, a network of networks. The real meat is who follows whom and the groups and aggregations that are derived from that. FFS, Myspace was closer to a social network than YT.

    k.

    • So... So this means the internet really is a series of tubes?
    • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      Maybe I'm unclear on the concept, but I thought "social media" was defined by the graph database model. YT is subscribe/watch/comment and a one-to-many model derived from broadcast media (the Tube part of YouTube; remember cathode ray tubes?).

      FB and Twitter are creatures of the internet, a network of networks. The real meat is who follows whom and the groups and aggregations that are derived from that. FFS, Myspace was closer to a social network than YT.

      In what way does YouTube differ? A creator can post a

    • by reanjr ( 588767 )

      By modern standards, any discussion forum is a social network.

  • by ljw1004 ( 764174 ) on Wednesday April 07, 2021 @11:30PM (#61249494)

    These findings come from a nationally representative survey of 1,502 U.S. adults conducted via telephone Jan. 25-Feb.8, 2021.

    I wonder, did they really manage to correct for phone aversion bias? I couldn't find an explanation of methodology. I wouldn't trust phonecalls as a way to learn about social media habits.

    • by vinn01 ( 178295 )

      Exactly. The numbers are probably something like:
            "1,500 low intelligence adults who answer junk phone calls were surveyed"
            "1,500,000 high intelligence adults who do not answer junk phone calls were not surveyed" /lies, damn lies, and statistics

  • And yet I am using both platforms less and less
  • half of the recommendations I get are of years old videos that I've already watched. Some older than 5 years. And I'm not one to re-watch something I've seen.

    I considered deleting my account and starting over. But when I check youtube from an incognito tab without logging in ... it's horrid. Like the worst trash that 10 year olds would like. And I should know, I was once 10.

  • I came..I saw...I got addicted for a minute..then I saw just how big a pile of empty, wasteful drek it was, so I quit using Facebook.

    At least Youtube has content that enriches my life. Sometimes I'll watch the slop that is also on YT when I need some cheap lulz.

  • It's just a video site, calm down. Having comments does not make it much of a "social" medium.

    In fact, I'd recommend a nice Greasemonkey script that removes all the comments or replaces them with "Hurr durr".

    • watch youtube on TV - no comments at all
    • by EvilSS ( 557649 )
      Channels do have the "community" section which is more twitter/FB like which I guess is their attempt to make it more of a social media platform, but yea, I would never lump it in with FB or Twitter as a primarily social media site.
    • It's just a video site, calm down. Having comments does not make it much of a "social" medium.

      Yeah and Slashdot is just a news aggregator. Can't say it has any social value either.

      I only come here for the articles.

  • They need to stop trying to become a "classicical" social media platform. I come to YT for the videos. I am tired of seeing the feed of videos on YT mobile looking more and more like facebook with people posting images, polls, and other commentary. Just show me the damn videos. I'll go follow you on the other platforms if I want to see that other BS.
  • by angularbanjo ( 1521611 ) on Thursday April 08, 2021 @02:38AM (#61249910)
    In the sense that Google is 100% taking your site browsing behaviour and amalgamating that with everything else it is tracking about you across the entire interweb. Isn't this the hallmark of social media (ie you are the product).
  • Senior Citizens Sadly Passing Away.
  • by timeOday ( 582209 ) on Thursday April 08, 2021 @08:53AM (#61250634)
    Youtube used to have more short clips by more different people. If somebody captured a funny crash on their bicycle, they'd upload it. Now youtube is dominated by professional content producers. If you upload your bicycle crash, hardly anybody will watch your upload,but it will be found and aggregated into an 8 minute sequence of dozens of clips in that genre by a specialist whose business is to nab all the views. Somebody might enjoy your little part but they have no way to send you a comment, or even determine where it came from.
    • Youtube used to have more short clips by more different people. If somebody captured a funny crash on their bicycle, they'd upload it. Now youtube is dominated by professional content producers.

      It seems that was the natural outcome of Youtube making itself a broker between advertisers, and content producers, many of the latter being subject enthusiasts who found a way to make a living recording and commenting on what they enjoy. I think it was for the better.

      One of the youtube political commentators that I follow gained an audience large enough that they started forming meetups to socialize face-to-face. Youtube remains an impressive platform for someone who puts work into it to build an audience

  • I do really love Youtube. Yes the "trending section" and the largest channels are hot garbage imo, filled with reactions, unboxings, clickbait and all manner of nonsense that is likely meant for someone well outside my age group but there are so many fantastic content creators buried in the soup. There's such a fantastic knowledge base of how-tos and video essay content that it really makes it a shame that Google seems to just drop the ball on rules and moderation so much and really seems to have no idea

  • A year of pandemic and Facebook has seen 0% growth? That's pretty much a death knell for a social media platform. Why is their stock going up so rapidly?

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