Social Media – Strategic Intelligence

All the vital news, analysis, and commentary curated by our industry experts.

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Published: March 31, 2025 Report Code: GDTMT-TR-S592-TH

Report Overview
Key Players
Table of Contents

2024 was a landmark year in social media regulation. The US Department of Justice’s victory over Google in its antitrust lawsuit, the postponed ban of TikTok in the US, and the arrest of Telegram CEO Pavel Durov signaled the end of an era for social media companies. The perceived leniency afforded to them by regulators has been replaced by unprecedentedly stringent rulings.

Scope

This report provides an overview of the social media theme.

It identifies the key trends impacting the growth of the theme over the next 12 to 24 months, split into three categories: technology trends, macroeconomic trends, and regulatory trends.

It contains details of M&A deals driven by the social media theme and a timeline highlighting milestones in the development of social media.

The detailed value chain comprises five layers: content, distribution, data, services, and customer. Leading and challenging vendors are identified across all five layers.

Key Highlights

2025 may see more severe legislation as Australia’s move to ban social media for those under 16 takes effect while the UK considers banning smartphones in schools. The year may also witness the outcome of Google’s second antitrust lawsuit regarding digital advertising, which could pave the way for more antitrust legislation against Big Tech companies.

Several smaller social networks, such as BlueSky, Damus, and Mastodon, have entered the market following regulatory scrutiny of large social media companies’ business practices and users’ desire for more intimate engagement. The regulatory crackdown on monopolistic behavior means the super-app model pioneered by Tencent in China is unlikely to be as successful in the West. Consumer demand will also impact attempts to build pools of connected apps, such as Elon Musk’s bid to transform X (formerly Twitter) into a super-app to diversify revenue streams away from personalized ads. Consumers’ increased concern about the use of personal data and content moderation will instead see smaller decentralized apps (dApps) become more popular.

Reasons to Buy

The report identifies six main categories of social media players (social networks, discussion forums, media sharing sites, consumer review networks, sharing economy companies, and messaging services) and highlights leading and challenging companies across all six categories.

It also analyzes Big Tech's presence in the social media sector. In most segments, big platforms benefit from network effects, and, thanks to their larger number of users, they are the most attractive to consumers and advertisers. However, smaller networks are gaining popularity due to user concerns about data privacy and content moderation.

1C Entertainment
Ab Initio
AccelData
Accusonus
Adeptia
Adetiq
Ahewar
Airbnb
Airbyte
Alation
Alibaba
Alphabet
Altair
Alteryx
Altibase
Amazon
Amundsen
Anthropic
Anyscale
Apache Foundation
Apple
Astronomer
AT&T
Ataccama
Atlan
Audio Analytics
AvantLink
Avis Budget Group (Zipcar)
Baidu
Baidu Tieba
BBC
BeReal
Bigeye
Bilibili
BlaBlaCar
Bluesky
BMC Software
Bolt
Booking.com
Boomi
Broadcom
Bumble
ByteDance
Cambridge Analytica
CData Virtuality
Celigo
Check Point Software
Cisco
CJ Affiliate
ClickHouse
Cloud Software Group
Cloudera
Clubhouse
Cohesity
Colibra
Common Room
Confluent
Couchbase
CrowdStrike
Damco Group
Damus
Dassault Systèmes (NuoDB)
data.world
Databricks
DataCaptive
Dataiku
DataReportal
DataStax
Degreed
Dell Technologies
Delta Lake
DeNA
Denodo Technologies
Didi Chuxing
Digital Confectioners
Digital Point
Discord
Douyin Pay
Eastern Jin Tech
Ebay
Electronic Arts
Epic Games
Epom
Experian
Feefo
Fivetran
FlexOffers
Flink
Flipboard
Forcepoint
Fortinet
Foursquare
Friendster
Fruitz.io
Fujitsu
Gab
GameSpot
Gary Sharp Innovations
Gas
General Electric
Getfeedback
Gett
Glassdoor
GoFundMe
GoTo Gojek
Grab
Gree
Gruby Entertainment
HackerNews
HalloApp
Hamul
Hightouch
HIPA Black Payun
Hive
Hootsuite
HPE
Hubski
IBM
Immuta
India Forums
Informatica
Information Builders
Insource
Instant Bloomberg
Intel
InterSystems
JFrog
Jido
Jitterbit
Judy's Book
Kakao
KasKus
Keboola
Kickstarter
Kik
Krafton
Kuaishou
Lark Technologies
Laskie
Lemmy
Line
Locket
Luxexcel
LY
Lyft
Make
Mastodon
Materialize
Matillion
MeaningCloud
MediaLab AI (Kik)
Medium
Memorable AI
Meta
Meta
Microsoft
Minit JSA
Mixi
MobileCoin
Momo
MongoDB
Monte Carlo
Mushi Information
NetApp
NetEase
News Corp
NextMind
Nikkei (Financial Times)
nMedia
Nostr
Nvidia
Odnoklassniki
Ofcom
Okta
Oladance
OmniPresence
OpenBack
Oracle
Ovaledge
Paddle
Palantir
Palo Alto Networks
Pandas
Panoply
Parler
PayPal
Percona
Perfect World
PewTube
Pinterest
Plato Team
PoliQ
PostgreSQL
Precisely
Prefect
Presize
Privacera
Profisee
Progress Software
Pulsar
Pure Storage
PyTorch
Qlik
Qualcomm
Qubole
Quora
Rakuten
Raxium
Reddit
Redis Labs
Rescued Ideas
Roblox
Rockset
S&P
SaidIt
Salesforce
SAP
SAS
Scale AI
Scality
Sea
Securonix
ServiceScape
Seven West Media
ShareChat
Shiftup
Shopify
Signal
Silent Phone
Sina
SingleStore
Singtel
Sitejabber
Six Degrees
Skimlinks
Snap
SnapLogici
Snowflake
Software AG
Sogou
Sony
Sophos
Spell
Stack Overflow
Starburst
Steam
Stibo Systems
Stone Bond Technologies
Strange Unvierse Technology
Stratio
StreamSets
Stripe (Supaglue)
Substack
Supermetrics
Symphony
Taboola
Tabular
Talkatone
TaskRabbit
Telegram
Tencent
Tequila Works
Teradata
Tessian
Th3rd
The New York Times
Thomson Reuters
Toptal
Transwarp
Tray.io
Trellix
Trend Micro
TripAdvisor
Trustpilot
Uber
Unity Technologies
Upsolver
uReview.me
Valve
Veritas
Vivendi
VK
Voat
Volt Active Data
Voodoo
Voxer
Workato
X (formerly Twitter)
XDA-Developers
Xiaohongshu
Xing
Yandex
Yelp
Yubo
YY
Zhihu
Zomato

Executive Summary

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Thematic Briefing

Trends

Signals

Value Chain

Companies

Sector Scorecard

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Social Media – Strategic Intelligence

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