Social media has transformed how people communicate with one another, how businesses conduct their operations, and how advertisers spend their advertising dollars. Meta (META), previously Facebook Inc., shot to the top of the heap as social media platforms acquired significant traction in the twenty-first century, outpacing competitors Twitter Inc. (TWTR) and LinkedIn Corporation in terms of users and income.

At first, Facebook was designed with college and high school students in mind. In its first two years, it gained nine million users. Despite declining a $1 billion offer from Yahoo Inc. in 2006, Zuckerberg didn’t go public with the business until 2012. The initial public offering (IPO), which raised $16 billion, was one of the biggest but least successful tech IPOs in the previous 25 years.

When compared to LinkedIn (310 million) and Twitter, Facebook has a significant lead in terms of monthly active users (MAU).

The social media tyrant distinguishes itself from its rivals in the following ways:

Advertising

Given the platform’s tremendous user base, a company would be negligent to abandon digital marketing. The vast majority of Facebook’s eight million advertisers are small enterprises. For the third quarter of 2021, Facebook had an advertising revenue of $28 billion.

Facebook is good at target marketing and has an excessive amount of user data. Broad-based advertisements targeting men, women, or baby boomers have made way for a more specialised strategy. The ubiquity of Facebook’s single sign-on boxes allows advertisers to monitor purchases and other significant activities.

Mobile Trends

Facebook’s explosive growth has been mostly attributed to mobile applications since the launch of its Messenger app in 2011.

According to estimates, Messenger had 2.77 billion monthly users by 2020.

Instead of competing with WhatsApp, a rival in the mobile industry, Facebook bought it in 2014 for $19 billion, adding one billion more users.

By 2020, 4.2 hours was the average daily usage time for smartphone users. The average smartphone has more than 40 installed applications, with 18 of them reportedly receiving 89% of daily usage. Facebook is currently among the most used app overall.

Engagement

According to Facebook, “engagement rate” refers to the proportion of viewers that liked, shared, responded to, or commented on a post.

In other words, the post has a significant impact on the viewer’s psychology when many users express their opinions pointedly.

Although these responses are intrinsically linked to the ego of the casual user, a business might utilise the interaction rate to gauge the mood of potential customers. Users have the option to browse catalogues and give feedback on goods and services. As a result, businesses gain access to a lot of information on potential and loyal customers, which helps them develop better marketing plans.

Facebook is the leader in social media because its platform appeals to a diverse range of users and incorporates a variety of media types, including photographs, messaging, and text. It is not as constrained as Twitter and LinkedIn, which frequently target a particular demographic. Facebook has a sizable user base as a result of its widespread popularity, which translates to ad revenue because businesses want to spend their ad expenditures on platforms that garner the most views, and with 2.91 billion active users every month, it’s difficult to beat Facebook.