Tuesdata: How BeReal and TikTok are smashing Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat (and WeAre8 is yet to make a dent)
Welcome to Tuesdata, our weekly look into the most interesting data from the media and marketing industry.
Today’s dataset is fascinating – quarterly downloads of social media apps here in Australia. The numbers – which have been provided to Unmade by Sensor Tower – suggest some intriguing trends:
Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat are all in radical decline – more so than the market has realised until now;
TikTok, which was top download for the previous five quarters in a row, has been overtaken;
Photo sharing app BeReal has seen explosive growth;
UK-Aussie startup WeAre8 is struggling to get off the ground
Any marketer or agency executive who makes decisions around social media spend would be well advised to look at this new data.
The content of the full post is available only to Unmade’s paying members. Today is a good day to sign up. Not only can you see the specific download numbers in this edition, you’ll also gain access to our Tuesdata archive.
Unmade’s paying members also get two free tickets to our Marketing In 2023 event in Melbourne, in a fortnight’s time. The discount code appears at the end of this email, beneath the paywall.
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How new kid BeReal is rocketing while WeAre8… isn’t
In today’s edition of Tuesdata, we examine a dataset prepared for Unmade by Sensor Tower.
Sensor Tower is a media intelligence platform which tracks app downloads via both Google Play and the Apple App Store. Because neither Google or Apple share this data publicly, Sensor Tower takes a panel-based approach. Effectively, that means the data is Sensor Tower’s best guess based on the behaviour of the consumers in its panel, which it says is the biggest of its type globally.
The numbers shown are based around individual Apple IDs and Google Play accounts, and automatically exclude app updates, or re-downloads onto new devices with the same ID.
It’s also worth bearing in mind that the chart shows new downloads for that quarter, so it is not a measure of overall usage – rather, speed of adoption.
First we’ll show all the services together on one chart, then break some of them out. The chart shows almost four years of Sensor Towerdata, starting at the beginning of 2019 and going through to the third quarter of 2022, which ended just yesterday.
Let’s pull out a few of those individual brands.
Meta’s fading Facebook and Instagram
Plotted on their own, the decline in new downloads for both Instagram and Facebook is quite stark.
In the first quarter of 2019, Instagram delivered 930,000 downloads for the quarter. In the quarter just gone, that fell to less than half that – just 439,000 downloads. Instagram has fallen from most popular download to fourth.
Facebook is also in decline – down from a high point of 798,000 downloads in the second quarter of 2020, to 507,000 in the last quarter.
In short, the two platforms’ owner Meta – distracted by founder Mark Zuckerberg’s metaverse obsession – is in trouble.
Snapchat declining too
Things look bad for Snapchat as well.
From a high point of 626,000 downloads in Q2 2019, Snapchat’s new downloads have declined by half to 317,000 in the last quarter.
TikTok vs BeReal
TikTok and BeReal are the two social media success stories of the last three years.
TikTok (which is arguably more of an entertainment platform than a true social media network) exploded in late 2019 and into 2020.
It was briefly overtaken again by Facebook for two quarters at the end of 2020 and into 2021, before being the most downloaded app for the next five quarters in a row.
For the 15 quarters covered in this data, TikTok was most downloaded in ten of them.
Instagram was top for two quarters, Facebook for two, and in the quarter just gone, BeReal rose to the top.
WeAre8 – No traction yet
WeAre8 is among the social media best known in the local industry because it is headed by prominent former Nine executive Lizzie Young. She spoke on our The Unmakers podcast back in September.
However, the fledgling site is yet to make a dent in the downloads data.
There was an upwards blip in late 2019 when it hit an estimated 2,000 downloads, but for most quarters it recorded less than 1,000 estimated downloads. That number rose to 7,000 in the quarter just gone as WeAre8 began to gear up local marketing activity. However, that only amounted to about 2% of the overall social media downloads for the quarter.
It’s too early to draw many conclusions about this slow start for WeAre8 just yet. As Young discussed during the interview, the networking functionality of the app – which promotes itself on the positivity of its content – is yet to be switched on.
Has Elon been sold a pup with Twitter?
Twitter’s download numbers have been bouncing all over the place, but the recent short term trends have been downwards.
From 340,000 downloads in the first quarter of this year, Elon Musk’s new plaything dropped by a third to 230,000 in the quarter just gone.
Overall downloads back in growth again
And finally, it’s worth putting those numbers into a stacked graph to see how consumers are treating social media overall.
There’s only been one quarter – in Q1 2020 – when social media app downloads were above 400,000 in total.
However, thanks to the growth of BeReal, the last quarter was the biggest for social media app downloads in more than two years.
Unmade Index:
It was a positive day on The Unmade Index, which followed the lead of the wider ASX, and rose by 1.94%
The biggest winner was Domain, which rose by 3.41%. Ooh Media was not far behind with a 2.85% rise.
Time to leave you to your Melbourne Cup day if that happens to be your belief system.
If you’re in Melbourne, don’t forget to take a look at out Marketing in 2023 event, which is only a fortnight away now. If you’ve read this far, it means you’re a paying member, so you’re entitled to two free tickets. The code is at the bottom of this page.
Thanks for your support and have a great day.
Toodlepip…
Tim Burrowes
tim@unmade.media
Your code for Unmade’s Marketing in 2023 event:
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