this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2023
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Social media is an advertising platform. YouTube is a form of social media that's profitable too, at least now, and it's all from ads.
YouTube is Google. Google and Facebook are advertising companies who have side hustles doing other things like showing videos. So far, nobody else has managed to do that. Is it possible another ad company with a social side-hustle could emerge? Sure, but Facebook and Google are going to do whatever they can to either buy up or destroy any company that got too successful at that.
Well, TikTok is the most recent contender. ByteDance is a private Chinese company though, so it’s hard to get accurate numbers.
Yeah, there are a few Chinese apps that may be profitable like Weibo, WeChat, TikTok, etc. But, it's hard to really know. Also, the ones that are China-based may not be profitable outside China. Like, apparently WeChat is more a platform than a social media app, and people use it for payments, gaming, and all kinds of other things. That might not translate to any other country.