Social Media Power Rankings: Which Platforms Matter the Most?

Power Rankings have been limited to sports for far too long. Let's rank the top social media platforms and see which one comes out on top.

Since I can remember, there’s a content format I’ve loved — power rankings. I remember being six years old and eagerly waiting for ESPN The Magazine to arrive so I could see how ESPN’s writers stacked up NFL and NBA teams. Thirty years later, power rankings are a mainstay of every sports site online because they capture something ethereal — past pure stats, which teams matter the most? (If you have no idea what I’m talking about, see an example here.)

It’s an essential exercise in vibes, and I’ve always wondered: Why do we limit power rankings to sports? Why not social media platforms? After all, we’re always asking the same question as marketers and creators—which platforms matter the most?

So with March Madness (aka the NCAA Basketball Tournament) here, I thought it’d be the perfect time to launch my inaugural Social Media Power Rankings. After all, sports are taking over work starting today; employers will lose nearly $20 billion in productivity over the next couple of weeks as corporate offices turn into gambling rings. It also gives me an excuse to really lean into the bit and use these rankings to make a Social Media March Madness Bracket — more on that below.

To keep these rankings manageable, I whittled the list to the eight most popular social media platforms in the US based on monthly active users. Let’s get into it.

8) LinkedIn

Oh LinkedIn, the Splenda of social media networks. It looks like social media, but there’s a weird aftertaste, and you can’t tell if it’s good for you or if you’re secretly rotting on the inside.

Like Splenda in the ‘90s, LinkedIn is on the rise. Engagement on the platform grew 37% last year as top tech and marketing personalities migrated over from X. It’s also become one of the most dominant platforms among high earners. If you make $100K+, you’re just as likely to use LinkedIn as Instagram.

So why the low ranking? It’s still fucking LinkedIn — a SaaS recruitment platform masquerading as a social media network. And it incessantly hounds users to write with AI, turning my feed into a ChatGPT fever dream.

7) Snapchat

I’m going to be honest: I don’t know what to make of Snapchat, and that’s not only because I’m a 37-year-old Brooklyn dad. Snapchat has steadily grown to over 850 monthly active users worldwide, with nearly 450 million daily active users (DAUs), yet it feels strangely irrelevant.

Perhaps that’s because its user base tends to follow a similar pattern. It’s always been big among teens, but when users graduate high school, they tend to use Snapchat less and TikTok and Instagram more. This inherently dampens the platform’s power, both from a cultural and capitalist perspective. Evan Spiegel is an innovative CEO who makes consistently smart product decisions, but its revenue has flat-lined, and there are signs that even teens are using the platform less.

6. Reddit

Reddit is on a heater.

Faced with a sea of AI slop polluting the web, Google threw up their hands, said “fuck it,” and turned over most of their organic search results to answers from Reddit, which has greatly broadened the platform’s influence. Its daily active users (DAUs) have nearly doubled over the past 18 months to 97 million.

As Elon Musk has turned X into a right-wing propaganda bachanalia, Reddit’s influence over pop culture and news has grown. Plus, it’s the only social media platform that’s making a real effort to fight AI slop, and while shit can get weird on Reddit, it’s often oddly wholesome.

Case in point: The second most popular post on the platform as I write this is cat doodles!

5. Facebook

I still remember the day I got my college email address. I was wearing size-four women’s jeans and a studded belt I bought at the Garden State Mall. I could not wait to log on to Facebook, soft-launch my new college identity, and leave my life as a greasy-haired virgin in a screamo band behind.

Me at 17, committing vocal atrocities at some DIY venue in Northern New Jersey

Fast forward to today, and no one I know under 50 uses Facebook. The only reason I’ve logged into my account in the past five years was to find the picture above. And let me tell you, things have gone horribly wrong over there. Millions of Facebook users are worshipping Shrimp Jesus, and its demented new growth strategy is to flood the platform with AI senior citizens designed to emotionally manipulate users.

I’d throw Facebook out of these rankings altogether, but it still has 193 million monthly active US users and nearly 3 billion MAUs globally. It’s like the giant blob in Ghost Busters; it’s so big you can’t ignore it, but you wish it’d just go away.

4. X (Formerly Twitter)

I know. X often feels like some strange mashup of a white nationalist power rally and a Silicon Valley cuddle puddle. The platform barely works anymore, and its ad revenue has plummeted. But these are power rankings, and there’s no doubt the platform has power, particularly over media narratives. You could argue that Elon buying Twitter swung the US election, and if you want to watch the US government get dismantled in real time, X is the place to be. It’s simultaneously worth far less than the $46 billion Elon paid for it and worth far, far more.

3. Instagram / 2. TikTok

We’re addicted to vertical video, and TikTok and Instagram are the top dealers on the market. So we need to group these two together.

At first, I thought I’d rank Instagram ahead of TikTok. After all, TikTok is still technically banned in the US and can only operate thanks to President Trump’s 75-day reprieve via executive order, which expires on April 5th. Trump will likely just extend TikTok’s stay of execution if TikTok’s parent company, Bytedance, doesn’t find a seller by then, but its future remains in doubt.

Both apps have roughly 2 billion users and dominate among younger generations. (Instagram wins millennials; TikTok owns Gen Z.) But TikTok wins this battle for one simple reason: culture starts on TikTok and flows downstream to Instagram. Both content trends and individual pieces of content tend to appear on TikTok first.

Plus, users spend nearly an hour per day on TikTok, double that of Instagram. If you love TikTok, you really love TikTok.

Its algorithm also makes it easier for creators to get their start, and it's where brands like Duolingo build cultural cache. These are power rankings, and TikTok is the more powerful platform.

And lest we forget: Instagram stole its most popular feature (Reels) from TikTok. Five demerits for Slytherin.

1) YouTube

YouTube has been in our lives since 2005, but 20 years later, it continues to dominate across generations. Five hundred hours of video are uploaded on the platform every minute. It has 2.5 billion monthly active users worldwide and 239 million in the US. It owns 10 percent of all US-connected streaming — that includes Netflix, Disney, traditional TV streaming apps, everything. Its market share is staggering.

There’s no other place where you can build a content empire while also building an SEO powerhouse. As part of the Google empire, YouTube is the second-biggest search engine in the world.

YouTube’s biggest vulnerability? A trend of influencers leaving the platform over the past year. In a recent viral Substack essay, popular chef Carla Lalli Music revealed why she was leaving YouTube despite amassing over 230,000 subscribers and over 18 million views — the math didn’t add up. She was losing $6,5000 per month on her videos because Google’s ad platform, Adsense, was taking 66% of the ad revenue her videos were earning. Even when she factored in branded content deals and cookbook sales that the videos drove, it simply didn’t make sense to continue investing in the platform.

The world’s greatest creators — from Lalli Music to Miss Rachel — have long been YouTube’s lifeblood. Screwing them over would be YouTube’s fastest path to losing the top spot.

Now It’s Your Turn to Weigh In

In honor of the NCAA Tournament, I decided to turn these rankings into a Social Media March Madness Bracket so you can determine the true social media champion.

The rankings here correspond with each platform’s seed in the bracket, and they’ll compete head-to-head until we have a winner.

Each day on LinkedIn, I’ll post a poll where you can vote on the true social media champion. (Why LinkedIn? Because ironically, that’s where my biggest following is, and most everyone has a LinkedIn account because capitalism.)

Will LinkedIn somehow upset YouTube? Can Reddit take down Instagram? Only time will tell. I’ll continue to update this post as new polls go live, but you can also check my LinkedIn for each new matchups.

UPDATE 4/17: WE NOW HAVE A CHAMPION!

ROUND 1

Thursday 3/20: YouTube (1) vs. LinkedIn (8): LinkedIn WINS 54% to 46% in a shocking upset.

Friday 3/21: TikTok (2) vs. Snapchat (7): TikTok TROUNCES Snapchat 93%-7%.

Saturday 3/22: Instagram (3) vs. Reddit (6): Reddit UPSETS Insta 71%-29%.

Sunday 3/23: X (4) vs. Facebook (5) (LIVE NOW): Facebook BEATS DOWN X 66%-33%.

ROUND 2

Friday 3/28: 8-Seed LinkedIn vs. 5-Seed Facebook: LinkedIn WINS 95-5%.

Sunday 3/30: 2-Seed TikTok vs. 6-Seed Reddit (LIVE NOW): Reddit WINS 54-46%.

CHAMPIONSHIP FINAL

Monday 4/5: 8-Seed LinkedIn vs. 6-Seed Facebook: LinkedIn WINS 60-40%!

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Recommended Things

The People Who Don’t Want You to Sleep (Sara Eckel / It’s Not Us): It would have been a buzzkill to belabor this up top, but your friendly reminder that most of the platforms in these rankings are kind of evil by design. This essay has one of the more haunting lines I’ve read this year: “Sleep is bad for the economy.”

The NBA’s Next Big Insider May Be an Outsider (Jordan Teicher / Neiman Labs): A fantastic profile of how a Substacker is breaking the NBA’s biggest scoops — and it isn’t even his own Substack.

Dream Teams: Working Together Without Falling Apart (Shane Snow): Shane is my good friend and writing partner, so I’m biased, but this is the most entertaining book on teamwork you’ll ever read.

I’m the best-selling author of The Storytelling Edge and a fractional CMO. Subscribe to this newsletter for the latest takes on content and storytelling in the AI age.