The social media "others"

When the phrase "social media" is uttered — the tendency is to associate it with the big names in India right now — Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat. Collectively, these are the platforms that have the most number of users and the most number of downloads on Google Play Store. Instagram claims to have one billion monthly active users, and for Facebook, that number stands at around 2.37 billion monthly active users. TikTok claims to have 120 million monthly active users in India alone.

However, with the increase in access to internet connections, there is a boom in the consumption of short form video on mobile devices. Many video-driven social networks that focus on providing users with regional language interfaces have gained popularity in India. The apps listed below are the top rated free apps for social networking on the Google Play Store and Apple’s App Store.

When it comes to monetisation, brands have figured out how to drive promotional content on bigger platforms in different ways. To understand how a brand works with a social network better, we spoke to a media strategist from a leading digital media agency. He explains that when it comes to smaller social networks, audience measurement is often a challenge for them — especially when it comes to measuring monthly active users. He added that this further makes it challenging to measure ROI on campaigns run, and they also need to make sure it's seen by the right audience.

He also said that no social media platform is equipped for monetisation during the stages of its inception and that monetisation comes in once the platform has an established user base. "Even on established platforms, the TG misses the message sometimes. It's not safe to bet on these smaller players just yet..." he signs off.