OSINT: Top International Social Networks & Chat Apps

Top international social networks & chat apps have become a significant part of our daily lives in the last two decades. Nowadays, these most popular social media platforms are the best method to communicate with your friends, gather information, and do online shopping. Or you can use a messaging app for communication purposes.

Besides, according to the Global Overview Report of Digital 2021, 42 billion people on the earth use social media networks. Therefore, identifying how the social networks and best messaging apps are popular in a country or region can be quite beneficial. So, follow this top international social networks & chat apps article.

Before we start our top 10 list according to each region, here are the most popular social networks according to Statista. This is the latest update for October 2021(Q3 results).

As you can see from the graph, with 2.895 billion monthly active users, Facebook holds the top position. Also, with 2.291 billion monthly active users, YouTube at second place. Besides, Third place goes to WhatsApp with 2.0 billion monthly active users. After that, Instagram, Facebook Messenger, WeChat, TikTok, Douyin, QQ, and Sina Weibo fill up the top ten list. This is an overview of messaging platforms and popular social networks worldwide. So, we will look at each region.

Western Countries

When we talk about the western countries, it includes most of the European Union countries, the UK, United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and many other countries. What are the social networks these countries use?

According to the Pew Research Center’s survey report 2021, here are the most popular social networks in the United States.

YouTube: With 81% of US adult users, YouTube is in the first place.
Facebook: With 69% of US adult users, Facebook is in second place.
Instagram: With 40% of US adult users, Instagram is in third place.
Pinterest: With 31% of US adult users, Pinterest is in fourth place.
LinkedIn: With 28% of US adult users, Linkedin is in fifth place.
Snapchat: With 25% of US adult users, Snapchat is in sixth place.
Twitter: With 23% of US adult users, Twitter is in seventh place.
WhatsApp: With 23% of US adult users, WhatsApp is in eighth place.
TikTok: With 21% of US adult users, TikTok is in ninth place.
Reddit: With 18% of US adult users, Reddit is in tenth place

When it comes to Europe, here are the top ten social networks.

YouTube: very popular among the teens to mid-20 and mid-20 to 40 age groups.
Facebook: Popular among mid-20 to 40 and above 40 age groups.
WhatsApp: Considerably popular among all age groups, therefore, hold third place in the list.
Instagram: Popular among mid-20 and mid-20 to 40 age groups.
Snapchat: Popular in countries like the UK, Germany, and Italy.
Twitter: Most Twitter users come from UK, Switzerland, Germany, and Italy.
LinkedIn: LinkedIn has overall good popularity in most European counties.
TikTok: TikTok is one of the rising social networks in Europe.
Pinterest: Popular among teens to mid-20 age group.
Badoo: One of the most popular dating platforms in Europe.

When it comes to China, top international social networks & chat apps like YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook are banned. Moreover, you might think for a business, entering into a China market without those social networks is impossible, but, no. For instance, China has lots of alternative social networks. So, here are China’s top 10 social networks.

WeChat: This is an all-in-one messaging app developed by Tencent. WeChat also provides games, online shopping, and multiple financial services.
Sino Weibo: Sino Weibo is a multi-blogging site that was launched in 2009 in China. It is a well-balanced combination of Facebook and Twitter.
Tencent QQ: Tencent QQ is an instant messing app developed by Tencent.
Tencent Video: Tencent Video is one of China’s best online video platforms. It has more than 9000 million monthly active mobile users.
Xiao Hong Shu: This is an eCommerce platform that has many social media network features. Also, the users can join in discussions post reviews, and also they can post their content too.
Douban: Douban is one of the best social networking platforms. Users can discuss movies, books, events, and music.
Zhihu: Zhihu is very similar to Quora. Users can ask or answer the questions accordingly.
Meituan-Dianping: This is a social network site that collects feedback on restaurant services. Users can share their experiences in restaurants.
Jinri Toutiao: Jinri Toutiao is a news distribution app that has all the valuable news feeds.
DouYin: DouYin aka TikTok is a video sharing platform. Users can advertise their content on this video platform.

Russia currently has over 70 million active social network users. Even though Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram dominate North America and Europe. Russia has many social media platforms that are reliable and popular in their country. So, let’s check them out.

VKontakte(VK): VK is the Russian alternative to Facebook and YouTube. According to Statista 2021 Q3 results, VK has 408.8 million monthly publications.
Instagram: Between the two Russian giant social media networks, we can find Instagram. And Instagram has 135.3 million monthly publications.
OdnoKlassniki: With 88.5 million publications, OdnoKlassniki takes the third position on this list. Besides, It is very similar to Facebook.
Twitter: Twitter has 31.1 million monthly publications.
YouTube: With 28.1 million monthly publications, YouTube is in fifth place.
Facebook: Facebook has 22.5 million monthly publications. Not that popular in Russia.
TikTok: TikTok has 8.5 million monthly publications.
Moi Mir: Moi Mir is one of the most popular social networks in Russia. It provides blogging services, photo/video sharing, and instant messaging.
Rutube: this is the Russian answer for YouTube. Users can share videos on Rutube.
Telegram: After the 2018 Russian ban, Telegram is in the tenth position.

According to the World Wide Worx and Arnica, here are the top 10 social networks in Africa.

Facebook: Facebook is the no.1 social network in Africa. It has 27 million monthly users
YouTube: YouTube holds the second position with 24 million monthly users
Instagram: Instagram has 10 million monthly users
Twitter: With 9.3 million monthly users
TikTok: Only 9 million monthly users
LinkedIn: Linkedin has 8.4 million monthly users
SnapChat: SnapChat has 7 million monthly users
Pinterest: Below 5 million monthly users
WhatsApp: Below 5 million monthly users
Telegram: Below 5 million monthly users

Top Messaging Platforms by Country

When we consider the latest Statista results for top messaging platforms, WhatsApp has 2.0 billion active users, monthly users, worldwide. Facebook Messenger has 1.3 billion, and WeChat has 1.2 billion. Apart from that, here is the top messaging platform by country.

According to the Statista 2021 Q3 results, here are the most used messenger services in western countries.

WhatsApp: 80% of teen and adult users choose WhatsApp.
Facebook Messenger: 72% of teen and adult users choose Facebook Messenger.
FaceTime: 33% of teen and adult users choose FaceTime.
Zoom: 30% of teen and adult users choose Zoom.
IMessage: 25% of teen and adult users choose IMessage.
SnapChat: 23% of teen and adult users choose SnapChat.
Skype: 15% of teen and adult users choose Skype.
Discord: 8% of teen and adult users prefer Discord.
Google Hangouts: 6% of teen and adult users choose Google Hangouts.
Telegram: 4% of teen and adult users choose Telegram.

Top Five Messaging Platforms list for China

WeChat has over 1.2 billion users. And second place is WhatsApp with 1.5 billion users, and FB Messenger has 1 billion users.

WeChat
WhatsApp
Facebook Messenger
Discord
Tencent QQ

Top Five Messaging Platforms list for Russia

WhatsApp has established itself as the most popular messaging platform in Russia. Besides, According to Statista, WhatsApp has a useful index of 82.

WhatsApp
Facebook Messenger
WeChat
SnapChat
Telegram

Top Five Messaging Platforms list for Africa

Over 90% of messaging app users chose WhatsApp, WeChat, and FB Messenger in Africa. Snapchat has over 73% users.

WhatsApp
Facebook Messenger
WeChat
SnapChat
Zoom

If you look at the definition of OSINT in google, it will give the definition as open-source intelligence. Therefore, we use these OSINT tools to gather information from visible sources. In other words, using OSINT operation, you can find information from a visible data source. Most of the IT security pros, intelligence operatives, and malicious hackers use these OSINT tools for their advantage.

There are plenty of uses of these OSINT tools. For top international social networks & chat apps, you can use these OSINT tools effectively.

We can use these OSINT tools to find users’ information from the most popular social media sites. Also, it can be used to get user information from messaging platforms. This is a more convenient way to get relevant information about people. Most people use these OSINT tools to find users on social networks and messenger platforms. So, check out our best five OSINT tools.

Top OSINT Tools to Find Users On Top International Social Networks & Chat Apps

UserSearch

If you are looking for a perfect OSINT tool for finding users in social networks or messaging apps, UserSearch is one of the best options for you. Moreover, you can search over 600 most popular social media networks and the best messaging apps on the UserSearch platform. When you enter the relevant information, the results will be loaded within 15 seconds. Sometimes, you might only have the first name of your friend. But, do not worry. UserSearch will give you the best results possible.

Here are some other services you can get from UserSearch.

You can search for users on dating sites, Crypto forums, and community forums.
Reverse email lookup, check Darknet reports, and pull emails from any site.

Pipl

Pipl is an excellent OSINT tool that comes with many options for its user. We highly recommend this OSINT tool for search users on social media networks or messaging platforms. They have provided their service to over 100 billion identifiers. Also, Pipl provides their service for filed like Ecommerce, Insurance, Banking & Financial, Law Enforcement, and many more.

Maltego

Maltego is a next-level OSINT tool able to help you with various operations. They specialize in finding relationships among people, domains, companies, and publicly accessible areas. Also, Maltego comes with some default information like DNS records, search engines, whois records, and social networks. So, searching for a user in social networks is a simple task.

Spyse

Spyse is popular as one of the best OSINT tools on the internet. They collect publicly visible data on various websites. Then Spyse engine analyzes those data to spot any vulnerabilities or issues. They use IoT devices and associated servers for this. Furthermore, the paid version and the free version are available for their users. However, if you need more advanced search results, you might have to use the paid version.

Spiderfoot

Spiderfoot is a great OSINT tool that is capable of searching IP addresses, CIDR ranges, ASNs, domains & subdomains, phone numbers, email addresses, usernames, and names. This OSINT tool comes with a command-line interface and web-based GUI.

Besides, this is a free OSINT tool that can find users n social media networks or messaging platforms. For this operation, it will take around 10-20seconds. And you will get the desired information effortlessly.

We hope that you did get a good idea of top international social networks & chat apps today. As you can understand, some platforms are only available for some countries. Apart from that, platforms like Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, and Instagram dominate most countries and regions. And if you need to find a user in that social network, we suggest you use OSINT tools like UserSearch and Pipl.

Further Resources

If you are looking for further research on this topic, these may interest you:

Top Social Networks by Country

Western Countries

Top Ten Social Network list for the United States

Top Ten Social Network list for Europe

Top Ten Social Network list for China

Top Ten Social Network list for Russia

Top Ten Social Network list for Africa

Top Messaging Platforms by Country

Top International Social Networks for Western Countries