The social networking market - France

Social networks are websites where users can build up a network of friends and acquaintances, using tools and interfaces to communicate and interact. Social networks - or social media - encompass quite different realities: "classic" social networks such as Facebook, instant messaging applications such as WhatsApp, video streaming applications such as YouTube and Twitch , and certain blogs are all considered social media. Most of the companies in this sector are based in the United States, particularly in California, but their activities are expanding worldwide across the web. Facebook, for example, has bought up a number of emerging players (notably Instagram and WhatsApp) in order to limit competition in a business characterized by fashion effects that can lead to rapid changes in consumption. As a result, companies in the sector continue to invest a significant proportion of their revenues in R&D and feature development, with the aim of maintaining interest among their customers and users. The sector has enjoyed uninterrupted growth since 2008, and continues to expand with the arrival of new players and new functionalities. The sales of the leader(Facebook) reached over US$117 billion in 2022, with a CAGR of 28.16% since 2014, thanks to online advertising (this study also contains an estimate of the sector's market size in France in 2022). The sector is characterized by GAFAM takeovers of the vast majority of social networking platforms. These social networks play a central role in global connectivity between individuals and in spreading the soft power of these brands ( Instragam and WattsApp for Facebook, Linkedin for Microsoft, Youtube for Google and Twitch for Amazon) Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter in 2022 for $44 billion highlights the crucial role played by social media in today's economy. It also underscores the imperative for certain companies to rethink their business model in order to remain viable, by implementing a paid subscription model, for example. The arrival of TikTok brought about an evolution in users' consumption habits, prompting them to switch from predominantly horizontal content, averaging around ten minutes in length, to very short, entertaining content in vertical format. This trend was quickly adopted by all other social networks. Faced with the emergence of Chinese giant TikTok and the need to develop more sustainable business models, social networks have had to adjust. Nevertheless, the sector continues to be driven by a steady growth in the number of new users with access to the Internet, and therefore to social networks.