Social Media: Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp More Popular than Twitter- PR Expert

Social Media: Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp More Popular than Twitter- PR Expert

A public relations practitioner has described Facebook, YouTube and WhatsApp as more popular than Twitter, another influential social media platform.

The Editor-in-Chief of PRNigeria and Economic Confidential, Malam Yushau A. Shuaib, made this known during his presentation at a Pan-African Social Media Summit held in Abuja at the weekend.

Shuaib who is an award-winning PR Practitioner and the author of “Crisis Communication Strategies” said that Facebook ranked highest in term of popularity and influence with about 2.8 billion users worldwide, followed by YouTube 2.1 billion, WhatsApp 2 billion, Wechat has 1.2 billion and Instagram 1 billion users.

Shuaib added that Linkedin has 740 million users, Tiktok 689 million and Pinterest 459 million followers, respectively.

Meanwhile, Twitter was ranked 9th with about 330 million users, since its inception in 2006.

Mr. Shuaib who spoke on the contribution of social media influencers for national unity, argued that, the wider coverage power of social media can never be overemphasized.

This is because; the advent of new technology is driving media thereby turning the world into a small village in terms of information circulation.

He further argued that, during the industrial age, it took about 38years years for Radio to reach 50million users, Television 13years, Internet 4years and iPod 3years each in order to attain the same feat as radio.

However, when it was launched in 2004, Facebook was able to attract more than 100million users in just less than 9 months. Thus, with the emergence of multiple social networking platforms, influencers have a great job to accomplish towards preaching the gospel of peace, unity and progress which will lead to national development.

Mr. Shuaib has also advised social media influencers to be cautious of sharing fake news, hate speeches and misleading information that can spark violence in the society. He noted that, the use of fact-checking/verification tools is necessary for validating trustworthiness of news before dissemination.

Also, contributing to the debate, ComradeAuwal Musa Rafsanjani, the Executive Director, Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Center (CISLAC), charged youths to employ social media as an agent for checking corruption in the country. He opined that, with adequate use of the social networking, Nigerians can hold leaders accountable for the misappropriation of billions of naira been injected into various COVID-19 programs.

Meanwhile, the Executive Director, Center for Information Technology and Development (CITAD), Dr. Y.Z. Ya’u, challenged the youths to make positive applications of various social media handles as means for harnessing various employment opportunities. He added that, youths should no longer continue to be job seekers, but rather job employers, especially at this era of digital economy.

By PRNigeria