Top 13 Facebook Competitors for Marketing to Boost Your Sales

We all know that Facebook is a super big name in social media industry and in recent years becoming a great marketing tool with extra value.

If you want to know the exact reasons and find Facebook competitors as your marketing alternative, then you come to the very right place.

To help you out, in this article, I do in-depth research and give a comprehensive analysis about these platforms.

What Do You Know About Facebook?

Founded by Mark Zuckerberg in Menlo Park, California, Facebook is an American online social media and social networking service.

The name Facebook comes from the name facebook directories given to American University students.

Established in 2004, Facebook is one of the big four technological companies among with Amazon, Google, and Apple. Mark Zuckerberg along with other co-founders kept the website’s membership only for Harvard’s students and then eventually started expanding its membership in other universities as well. Soon in 2006, Facebook announced its new policy in which anyone who claims to be 13 years old will be allowed to create his profile on Facebook.

The current estimation of Facebook active users is 2.2 billion and counting. The operating income of Facebook in 2018 is the US $24.913 billion, and the total revenue is the US $55.838 billion. According to Wikipedia Facebook makes most of his revenue from advertisements that appear on the screen. The company’s net worth is estimated to be around the US $22.111 billion.

It has taken over large social media companies like Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus VR, Pebbles, Redkix, Vidpresso, Chain space, Confirm, Ozlo and 67 other companies in the last 14 years. However, many of these acquired companies are still viewed as competitors to Facebook considering they offer some similar features and have a common larger purpose of social networking.

What Makes Facebook a Popular Social Media Application?

One of the biggest social networking websites, Facebook has emerged as a popular platform to share ideas, connect with people, and promote their businesses across the world. Time and again, new social media platforms with functions similar to Facebook have emerged.

While many of these have been tagged as Facebook competitors, the platform itself has stood strong and continues to remain a popular choice despite controversies in the recent times. One may not have a profile on LinkedIn, but he or she will likely have a Facebook account (if supported in the user’s country).

Here is why Facebook is regarded as the top-ranking social media application:

1. Easy to use: Facebook can be very easily accessed by anyone above 13 years. All you need to go is go on their website and create your profile filling all your details. In case of any confusion, they also have guide tour for beginner telling each corner of your profile. You can operate your Facebook profile with Internet connectivity from computers, smartphones, and tablets.

2. Socializing: Facebook lets you become a friend with someone totally on the opposite side of the world. It allows users to share posts, texts, and multimedia. It also has a separate chat room -Facebook Messenger where you can communicate to your Facebook friends on the list. There are certain groups that a user can create where many people with common interest meet and have conversation, discussions and plan events.

3. Brands Visibility: Facebook allows you to create your own personal page or business page through your profile to reach out to many users to expand your business. You can also do advertisements for your brand on Facebook at a meager price and increase engagement. You can also link your other social media handles to your Facebook page.

4. E-commerce: You can create your own stores on Facebook. It has certain buttons like call, shop, e-mail through which customers can reach out to the store owner.

5. Games: You can also play games with popular ones being Pool, Farm Ville, Candy Crush, and Sims Social.

Top 13 Facebook Competitors You Should Consider

1. Instagram: 

Launched in 2010 by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, Instagram is a photo and video sharing social networking service. It is one of the strongest among Facebook competitors as it rapidly gained popularity with one million users registered in just two months.

Unique Features:

A. Explore: The Explore tab displays all popular photos and videos taken in your nearby location, trending tags, places, curated content along with live video, events, promoting your posts and stories.

B. IGTV: IGTV or Instagram Television allows users to upload a video of 10 minutes with the file size up to 650 MB. Users who are famous and verified can upload a video of 60 minutes with file size up to 5.4 GB.

C. Business Accounts: In 2016, Instagram launched a new feature- Business Accounts. Along with business accounts, it also added new features related to business accounts like insights, business profiles and ability to turn on or off the post of any user whose post you may not like to receive.

D. Advertisements: Instagram allows its user to promote your post for more engagement. This is beneficial for all small online stores to create awareness about their brand.

2. Twitter: 

Founded in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Evans Williams, Twitter is American online news and social networking service. It was announced as one of the ten most visited websites in 2013.

Unique Features:

A. Tweets: Users share their posts and communicate with each other through tweets. These tweets are publicly visible but can be customized if the user only wants to share the information only with his/her followers. Users can repost tweets by anyone as wel las send direct messages.

B. Easy to access: One can share its post from any device. Twitter is available on desktop, smartphone, iPhone, tablet, iPad, Android, Windows 10 and Blackberry.

C. Trending Topics: A small section dedicated to “trending topics” helps users find and know more about what’s happening around the world or in their city or country.

D. Live Streaming Videos: Twitter announced its launch of live streaming videos in 2016. This feature allows users to host various events live for the followers to watch. They have partnered with MTV Video Music Awards, Bloomberg, Buzzfeed to name some.

3. LinkedIn:

Registered with 610 million members in 200 countries, LinkedIn is a very popular application for employment-oriented services. It is mainly for the purpose of professional networking which includes employers posting about vacancies in their organization and job seekers uploading their resumes.

Unique Features:

A. Connections: LinkedIn allows its users to connect with other users. If you want to connect any user at a professional level, you can send them to request to connect. The best part is everyone from politicians to a first line job employer can get added in your connections.

B. Skills and Endorsement: Helps you to build an impressive profile. You can add your skills like writing, marketing and so on. LinkedIn allows any of your known people in connection to endorse you or allows you to endorse your colleagues or classmate rating them in skills they excel in.

C. Showcase Pages: This helps to drive more traffic on your profile. It is very useful for people with business as it allows the users to target different people by providing them with these pages which focus on its product and services.

D. Saves: LinkedIn allows its users to save searches so that the user can access it later. For example, if a user is attracted to a job post vacancy, he can save it.

4. Snapchat: 

Snapchat is a multimedia messaging app created by Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy and Reggie Brown in 2011. It is one of the top Facebook competitors with over 187 million daily active users.

Unique Features:

A. Lens and Stickers: Users can personalize their snaps by using visual effects and stickers available. It also lets the user add geo-filters to your snaps so your friends can see your locations.

B. Discover: The discover tab on your screen is a section where you will see advertisements of many major publishers like Buzzfeed, Vice, and Snapchat itself.

C. Stories: Users have loved Snapchat because of stories—its most used and popular feature, which has been adapted by Instagram and Facebook in recent times. A story is a quick update in the form of image or vide message that automatically disappears within 24 hours. Users are notified I if the other side user has screenshotted your story or your chat section. The story tab is where you post your snaps or pictures, and you can share your story privately with your friend or friend group. This tab saves your snaps in chronological order which can be accessed by you later.

5. Google: 

Founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google is an American multinational technology company specializing in internet related services and products. It is among one of the toughest Facebook competitors because Google is considered one of the big four technological company with Apple, Amazon, and Facebook. Google has more services beyond just being a search engine which is a major attraction to users.

Unique Features:

A. Google Translate: A service that helps overcome language barriers. You can easily translate any language into your native language to understand messages, news or any information.

B. Google Drive: This is like windows office where you can create documents, excel sheets, slideshow, and many others. It allows users to even save their photos as a backup in its storage.

C. Google Calendar: This helps users with time management and scheduling events. It allows its users to save, create and edit events according to them and is available on the web as well as on Android and iOS.

D. Google Duo: This was developed primarily for instant video chat. It is available for Google Chrome users, Desktop, Laptops, Android and iOS users.

6. WhatsApp: 

Based in Mountain View, California, WhatsApp is a leading mobile application used for sending text messages and voice calling. It is extremely popular in India, Brazil, larger parts of Europe, and USA.

Unique Features:

A. Free: WhatsApp can be downloaded free of cost. You can send free texts and voice messages to anyone with WhatsApp facility. All you need to operate the application is internet connectivity.

B. End-to-end encryption: End-to-end encryption feature of WhatsApp ensures that your chats are not accessed or read by any third-party including WhatsApp itself. It provides the sender and recipient privacy to share information with each other.

C. WhatsApp Payments: Everyone is becoming digital and so WhatsApp also introduced its new feature WhatsApp payment which will allow users to transfer money. It will be operated with UPI which will allow transferring money from user to user without beneficiary’s detail.

D. Video Calling services: Along with text and voice messages, WhatsApp has a feature to connect to your dear and near ones with video calls in any part of the world with WhatsApp access.

7. WeChat: 

Developed by Tencent, WeChat is a Chinese multi-purpose messaging, social media and mobile payment application. It is one of the biggest Facebook competitors because it is known for China’s app for everything.

Unique Feature:

A. WeChat Pay Payments: WeChat Pay Payment is an embedded feature of transferring money in WeChat. All users with WeChat application have access on WeChat Pay Payment.

B. Mini Program: Launched in 2017, WeChat Mini Programs is for business owners to create a mini-application on WeChat. The user can scan the QR code at the supermarket bill counter and pay the bill.

C. WeChat Out: WeChat allows its users to call mobile phones and landlines anywhere in the world. To have access on this feature the user will have to pay using a credit card.

D. Moments: Moment is a newsfeed of the user where they can share posts, texts, videos, music and other information with other users.

8. VK: 

Based in Saint Petersburg, VK is a Russian online social media and social networking service. VK is ranked as one of the most popular social networking websites in Belarus and Kazakhstan.

Unique Features:

A. Newsfeed: In newsfeed, users can share posts, images, map, documents or videos with other users and can also add hashtags and user mentions.

B. Privacy: Users can control their privacy by selecting which users they want to share their pictures or videos.

C. Music: Users can upload music and can also create the playlist. Users can share their music with others by attaching to messages and newsfeed posts.

D. Other Social Media: VK allows users to link their VK profile with profiles on other social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.

9. Quora: 

Founded in 2009, Quora is a question-answered website where users can ask questions, answer it, organize and edit it in the form of an opinion. They have several events such as the Top Writers Program and Quora World Meetup.

Unique Features:

A. Activity Feed: Activity feed on your profile is a section where you will find all latest updates of questions, people, topics and boards that you are following and of your interest.

B. Following Topics: Quora allows its users to follow other profile according to the user’s interest. When the user follows any other profile, it shows up in the following topics section.

C. Sharing Questions and Answers: Quora allows its users to ask questions to other users and to the expert writers. It also allows you to answer questions that you are aware of. You can share your questions and answer on different social media platforms.

D. Your Quora Home: In Your Quora Home section users can see their own activity like questions and answer that they must have asked or answered.

10. Weibo:

One of the biggest social media platforms in China, Weibo is a Chinese microblogging website. It has more than over 445 million monthly active users with surging stocks, advertising sales, revenue and total earnings in a quarter.

Unique Features:

A. Trending Topic: Weibo has a section where users cans see all trending topics around the world. But it has control over what its users should be aware of.

B. Easy to access: Weibo is easy to access as it is available on all devices such as desktop, smartphones, Android and iOS.

C. Different Versions: Weibo has two versions of its application- simplified and traditional Chinese character. It has different versions in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

D. Identification Policy: Weibo verifies the celebrity’s and influencer’s profile. Once the profile is verified the user will see colorful the “V” symbol beside their names.

11. Odnoklassniki: 

Odnoklassniki is a Russian social network service for users to connect with each other. It has more than 200 million registered users with 45 million visited the application daily.

Unique Features:

A. OK Music and OK Videos: Users can share music and videos with other users, and it displays the most popular music and videos trending on Odnoklassniki.

B. Rating System: Odnoklassniki allows users to rate their pictures out of five.

C. Discussion Board: On Odnoklassniki many users can come together and discuss a certain topic or issue.

D. Updates: The social media applications update the users with everything happening around the world timely.

12. Pinterest: 

With 250 million monthly active users, Pinterest is a social media web and mobile application where you will find information on almost everything mainly with images and short videos.

Unique Features:

A. Pins:  Pins are basically the saved images or short videos that you like — for example, food recipes, Bullet Journal ideas, hairstyles that you would like to try.

B. Creating Board: Board is a collection of your favorite images and videos which you create by pinning it. You can also create your own board by uploading your favorite picture that you want to showcase people.

C. Tried Tab: In tried tab, you can upload pictures of things that you tried after watching another user’s video or any picture. Like if you like a cake recipe of any user on Pinterest, you can try making the same cake an upload it.

D. Following: Pinterest allows you to follow other users whose profile you may have liked or profile which are of your interests.

13. YouTube: 

YouTube is a video sharing website founded in 2005. Users can upload and avail any videos like video clips, TV show clips, music videos, short films, documentary, movie trailers and many more.

Unique Features:

A. Monetization: Once you become a creator on YouTube, it monetizes your videos giving you extra income according to the views on your videos. Many YouTubers has selected YouTube as their full-time career.

B. Bell Button: YouTube showcases bell button beside the subscribe button which helps viewers to stay updated with new videos of their favorite YouTubers with notifications popping on their screen.

C. Offline Videos: YouTube allows its user to save video and watch it offline later.

D. Community: Community is basically where users can upload posts, pictures, text and live videos.

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