Social media and image sharing platform Pinterest had 4,666 full-time employees at the end of its fiscal year 2024, an increase of 652 employees on the previous year. Over the past couple of years, tech companies have seen worldwide layoffs.

In 2023, 52 percent of global employees at Pinterest self-identified as women, down by one percent from 2022. Overall, 2021 was the first year in which Pinterest had a higher share of women than men working at the company. Additionally, under one percent of employees did not declare their gender, and less than one percent identified as non-binary and gender non-conforming.

In 2023, 63 percent of engineering employees at Pinterest in the United States were Asian, and almost half of all employees in leadership positions were white. Just four percent of U.S. leadership roles were held by employees who self identified as Black, and a further four percent of those in leadership roles self-identified as Latiné or Hispanic.

In 2023, 42 percent of Pinterest employees in the United States were Asian, and 35 percent were white. Additionally, less than one percent of employees self-identified as American Indian, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian and/or Pacific Islander, and six percent were Black.

The impressive growth of social media companies in the early 2010s made many founders extremely wealthy. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is the world’s richest social media entrepreneur with a personal net worth of *** billion U.S. dollars. Zhang Yiming, the creator of TikTok, is worth **** billion U.S. dollars. Social media companies going public and being acquired The years between 2010 and 2019 saw a flurry of social media companies filing for an initial public offering (IPO) or being acquired by bigger, public companies, generating significant amounts of wealth for their founders and early employees in the process. Facebook, which went public in May 2012, had the biggest IPO in tech and internet history until online shopping giant Alibaba went public in 2014. Many of the richest social media entrepreneurs are connected to Facebook and most of their net worth is derived from their early investment and subsequent ownership stake in the social network. Many early Facebook investors and co-founders have used their earnings from the company to increase their wealth derived from tech. Some, such as Dustin Moskovitz, have gone on to found other companies, whereas others, like Eduardo Saverin, have become venture capitalists. The social media era Other social media company IPOs which created major online buzz include Twitter’s in 2013, Snap’s initial public offering four years later and more recently, Pinterest’s, which made headlines in early 2019. TikTok's founder Zhang Yiming saw an unprecedented success in 2020 and ranked second on the social media billionaires' list. The coronavirus social restrictions and lockdowns led to people resorting to TikTok as a means of entertainment and socializing. Instagram founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger netted a huge payday in 2012 when Facebook bought their then up-and-coming social network Instagram for * billion U.S. dollars – a sum which at that time was unheard of for such a transaction. However, this is nothing compared to the payout enjoyed by Jan Koum and Brian Acton two years later, whose chat service WhatsApp was acquired by Facebook for a staggering ** billion U.S. dollars – although the Facebook-Instagram deal arguably made bigger waves across the industry. In hindsight, Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram has come to represent a turning point in tech venture capitalism, helping to define the concept of tech “unicorns” and positioning an acquisition-enabled exit as a viable and lucrative target for start-ups.

In May 2025, Instagram had almost ***** million users in the United Kingdom (UK). The largest share of Instagram users were individuals aged between 25 and 34 years old, at **** percent. This was followed by the category of users aged 18 to 24 years. Individuals over 65 years old, were less likely to use the social media platform, making up the smallest share of Instagram users during this period. Leading social media in the UK According to figures based on approximately ******* billion hits online per month, Facebook was the leading social media website in the UK as of November 2024, holding over ***** percent of the social media market share. This was followed by Instagram and X (formerly known as Twitter). The Pinterest website ranked fourth during that period, with a market share of **** percent. Facebook: Leader in the UK The number of social network users in the UK experienced an increase of roughly *** million users between 2018 and 2023. The share of female Facebook users is slightly higher than the number of male users. At ********* of respondents, individuals aged between 25 and 34 years old made up the largest share of Facebook users in the UK. This was followed by roughly **** percent of users within the 35 to 44 years old category. Facebook usage appeared to be the lowest among those aged 65 and older.

As of February 2025, India had a total of 413.85 million Instagram users, the largest Instagram audience in the world. The United States had 171.7 million users, and Brazil had 140.7 million. Indonesia, Turkey, and Japan ranked in fourth, fifth and sixth position, respectively. Kazakhstan is the leading country for Instagram audience reach, with 86.2 percent of the population using the social media service. Turkey came in second, with a penetration rate of 85.5 percent and Uruguay ranked third, with 87.1 percent, followed closely by the UAE, Brazil, and Bahrain. It took Instagram 11.2 years to reach the milestone of 2 billion monthly active users worldwide. WhatsApp, also owned by Meta, took 11 years, whilst Facebook took 13.3 years and YouTube took just over 14 years. Instagram’s demographics in the United States As of March 2025, Instagram was the fourth most visited social media service in the United States, after Facebook, Pinterest and X. Out of TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat, TikTok was the most used of all three platforms by Generation Z. Overall, 57 percent of Gen Z social media users used Instagram in 2021, down from 61 percent in 2020 and 64 percent in 2019. Instagram finds most popularity with those in the 25 to 34 year age group, and as of January 2025, roughly 28.3 of all users in the United States belonged to this age group. The social media app was also more likely to be used by women. Most followed accounts on Instagram Instagram’s official account had the most followers as of April 2024 with over 672 million followers. Manchester United forward Cristiano Ronaldo (@cristiano) had over 628 million followers on the platform, while the Argentinian footballer Lionel Messi (@leomessi) had over 502 million followers. The Instagram accounts of the American singer and actress Selena Gomez (@selenagomez) and the media personality and makeup mogul Kylie Jenner (@kyliejenner) had over 400 million followers each.

According to a report published by DataReportal, the social media platform Facebook ranked first among the leading social media networks in Thailand as of Q3 2024, with a penetration rate of around ** percent. The number of Facebook users in Thailand reached around*** million in 2024.

In the third quarter of 2024, 93 percent of the people connected to internet in Ghana used WhatsApp. Tiktok was also a popular social media platform, utilized by 81 percent of internet users and overtaking Facebook in second position. While the aforementioned platforms generally increased in usage over the last year, others like Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat lost quite a number of accounts. Men in social media usage in Ghana Men dominate the overall social media usage in Ghana, referring to close to 59 percent of the population as of January 2025. For instance, Facebook, one of the leading social media channels, has about 59 percent of its users being men. As a result, men are the most reachable by social media advertising in Ghana, especially those between the ages of 25 and 34 years. Preferred social media devices For different social media networks, people in Ghana tend to use different devices, including mobile phones, desktops, and tablet computers. For instance, desktops are mainly used to access YouTube, while individuals use tablets to access Pinterest and Facebook. In terms of mobile devices, some of the most common social media channels used thereon are Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.