It’s earnings season for the big social media companies, which means they have to present up-to-date numbers on exactly what’s been happening on their platforms. The most interesting data this time around came not from the biggest channels (ie. Facebook & Instagram), but from the second tier social media companies, so we dug into the numbers to see what we could find out:

Reddit

“I think we’re hitting a kind of an era of mainstream for Reddit,” Reddit co-founder and CEO Steve Huffman told Yahoo Finance. “We finally made the product easy enough to use that we’re hitting this tier of mainstream-ness.”

For as long as Reddit has existed it has been a corner of the internet where people could gather to discuss whatever topic they were interested in — no matter how niche — and find their people.

Today, Reddit has become much more than that. It is now the sixth-most Googled word in the US, and it’s where millions of people go for information, largely because they’d rather see what other people are saying than trust Google’s algorithm to provide answers.

Many SEO professionals have noticed this trend and are leveraging it to drive traffic to their websites. They’re strategically engaging in Reddit discussions and adding links to get their content to the top of search results. If you’re interested, you can check out this guide on using Reddit for SEO.

Snapchat

For a lot of marketers, Snapchat has been the best kept secret in digital marketing. It has a highly engaged user base that responds very well to ads, but most advertisers ignore the platform, which has kept competition unusually low.

They shared a few numbers that back up that idea:

Growth for Snapchat, however, appears to have stalled. Their daily active users in North America has plateaued at 100 million. They did add 11 million international users, but the rate lags behind the other big social media apps.

The brightest spot for Snap has been their subscription service, Snapchat+, where 12 million people are paying for premium features. Compare that with X (Twitter) where, despite their best efforts, there are 1.3 million paying subscribers.

While Snap’s shareholders may not be encouraged by this recent report, the opportunity for brands remains unchanged. They are rolling out new ad units specifically for small businesses, including direct response options that, according to their numbers, are getting impressive results for those advertisers who are brave enough to go where most brands aren’t competing.

Threads

One of the biggest stories of this quarter has been how apps that are attempting to offer an alternative to X are starting to gain some real traction.

Meta’s version, known as Threads, burst onto the scene in 2023 with 100 million users in its first 9 months, largely because they were able to convince Instagram users to try out the new platform.

Since that initial surge growth, usage appeared to stall as people tried figure out what exactly Threads was going to be used for.

That seems to be in their past now, as growth tripled its previous pace, reaching 275 million monthly active users. A lot of that growth appears to be coming from people who are searching for an alternative to the dumpster fire that X has become.

If Threads can maintain that rate, it would become the most popular microblogging app by 2026 (sooner if users continue to delete X from their phones).

Bluesky

This was Jack Dorsey’s side project that he started while still leading Twitter. His idea was to create a decentralized social media platform where people would not be restricted by a single company, but could take their content and audience with them wherever they wanted to go.

Bluesky languished as a niche player for years, but has picked up steam recently, likely for the same reason that Threads has gained momentum: as an alternative to X.

In the past week alone, Bluesky added 700,000 new users, bringing its total close to 15 million.

As it compares to the big players, Bluesky is still a small community, but major accounts such as reporters, sports media, and others have started to make the move, which means it’s worth keeping an eye on.