How much do social media apps make from each user? \ stacker news ~charts

How much do social media apps make from each user?

4951 sats \ 29 comments \ @kr 23 Feb charts

After Reddit released their S-1, I went digging to find out how much revenue different social companies earn from their average user.

Most companies use slightly different metrics to determine active user numbers, and Twitter’s data gets an asterisk because it is only current as of 2021, but in general this shows a range of $11-$43 per daily active user.

Pinterest is another one I was going to add, but they don’t reveal their daily active user numbers each quarter.

Pinterest’s annual revenue per monthly active user is $6.45, slightly below Duolingo’s $6.93.

If we assume it’s fair to extrapolate that data point, it’s likely that Pinterest fits somewhere between Duolingo and Reddit on the chart below.

It’s still very early, but anyone want to guess what average revenue per daily active user on Stacker News is?

view all related items

453 sats \ 4 replies \ @Scoresby 23 Feb

I'd guess something like $3 per daily active user per year, but I'd also say that I'm not entirely sure how to count revenue in SN's case.

150 sats \ 3 replies \ @kr OP 23 Feb

SN only collects revenue from territory sales today, so the data needed to calculate a rough approximation of ARPU is all public on the analytics page

433 sats \ 2 replies \ @Scoresby 23 Feb

I'll have to go see how close I was.

Side note: is your default zap amount 69 sats?

90 sats \ 1 reply \ @kr OP 23 Feb

is your default zap amount 69 sats?

👀

433 sats \ 0 replies \ @ablunderfilledlife 23 Feb

412 sats \ 7 replies \ @arrivederci 24 Feb

The future of social media does not lie with centralised server based platforms (this includes SN)

The future lies with decentralised, fully P2P platforms, which will be far superior and do not require revenue generation (because they incur no running costs)

31 sats \ 6 replies \ @kr OP 24 Feb

you had me until the last sentence.

can you share an example of any system that incurs no running costs?

0 sats \ 5 replies \ @arrivederci 24 Feb

Yes, Keet, and other apps that will be built on the recently released Pear runtime.

Keet runs on zero infrastructure. No servers and no relays (unlike Nostr). The only thing that the developers have done to get the P2P network up and going is to run a few instances themselves, and it's from specially signed instances (again, not servers) that updates to the software are propagated.

The Bitcoin chat room on Keet currently has over 1400 members and the chat is 'hosted' or shared across those members devices (mainly phones and some desktops). No servers, no running costs.

10 sats \ 2 replies \ @kr OP 24 Feb

as far as i know, Keet required years of development (and will continue to need upgrades over time like all software). isn’t that a running cost?

412 sats \ 1 reply \ @arrivederci 24 Feb

No, development is not a running cost. It's a development cost, that may be sponsored (as was done with Keet), or paid as an investment by a company that does plan to make revenue from a P2P app (with still zero running costs), or donated by individual contributors.

The difference between development costs (even ongoing ones) and running costs is that running costs scale with number of users on the platform. If you have 4 billion users your running costs are substantial on a server based system. They are still zero on a P2P platform.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @kr OP 24 Feb

the term “running costs” doesn’t have anything to do with how the costs scale with usage.

running costs are costs that are ongoing. i think you’re talking about variable costs.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @joda 29 Feb

I'm gonna have to do a deep dive on holepunch. I've learned to never give anything the benefit of the doubt, and the website makes me think of a shitcoin designed to be a self-propagating virus.

Let me know if you have come across and non biased reviews or overviews...

26 sats \ 0 replies \ @arrivederci 1 Mar

Certainly not an unbiased review but maybe useful as an overview is the recent series of short video tutorials in which the Holepunch team demonstrate building an app with the Pear runtime.

But yeah, if I come across an unbaised review I'll submit it to SN.

412 sats \ 1 reply \ @Car 24 Feb

👏👏👏 legendary post kr

100 sats \ 0 replies \ @kr OP 24 Feb

🫡

277 sats \ 1 reply \ @gmd 23 Feb

I'm always impressed how bad twitter and reddit are at accurately targeting their users... the data should be right there...

99 sats \ 0 replies \ @joda 29 Feb

Adblocking on both those platforms is comprehensive. I've never seen an ad on either.

I don't use Facebook or Instagram much, but I've never been able to fully remove their ads.

126 sats \ 3 replies \ @Undisciplined 24 Feb

anyone want to guess what average revenue per daily active user on Stacker News is?

I know it's not a number with an infinite denominator.

32 sats \ 1 reply \ @south_korea_ln 24 Feb

Underrated comment

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 24 Feb

thanks

77 sats \ 0 replies \ @joda 29 Feb

Same for SN expenses (dev pay)

47 sats \ 1 reply \ @kr OP 23 Feb

One thing to note here is that these are all global averages.

Facebook earned $226.93 from their average North American monthly active user this year, roughly 11x more than they earned from the average user in Asia.

270 sats \ 0 replies \ @joda 29 Feb

Yeah that. Plus the variance between top-and bottom-users. I know some people who I swear buy something from a social media ad at least every week.

21 sats \ 1 reply \ @BlokchainB 23 Feb

This per user stat is confusing. Are they taking their revenues and dividing by the total number of users?

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @kr OP 23 Feb

roughly, yes.

what makes it confusing?

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @cryotosensei 17 Mar

deleted by author

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @TheBTCManual 24 Feb

Any idea what YouTube and Tiktok are pulling in?

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @cryotosensei 24 Feb

Wah I can’t believe Reddit earns $12-13 off me every day!

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @south_korea_ln 24 Feb

Annual revenue ;)