The daily Russian audience of the social networks Facebook and Instagram banned in Russia decreased by eight and almost four times, respectively, in seven months of 2022, Forbes Russia writes, citing data from Mediascope research company. The Telegram messenger has become the main winner of blocking foreign networks.
Mediascope data covers the population of Russia aged 12 and over. The company performed calculations taking into account sessions of any duration. Including cases when a user enters the social network and immediately exits because the application does not work due to blocking. And taking into account sessions lasting from 5 minutes or longer.
The Instagram audience decreased in March by 21.5% – from 37.8 million in February to 30 million users, after which in April it fell even more – to 14.2 million participants. By July, the average daily number of users accessing Instagram was 10.6 million. With sessions lasting more than 5 minutes, the number of Instagram users decreased even faster – from February to March, the audience decreased by 41%, from 28.9 million to 16.9 million users, and from March to April the number of visitors to the social network fell to 6 million people. By July, the Instagram mobile app was used by up to 5.5 million people per day on average.
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Telegram won the most audience from blocking Facebook and Instagram
In turn, the audience of Facebook decreased by 4.7 times. From about 9 million people in February to 1.9 million in July. Taking into account sessions longer than 5 minutes. The number of social network users in February was 2.7 million, and in July – only 305 thousand.
The Telegram messenger, whose average daily audience grew by 66%, from 25 million in January to 41.5 million people per day in July. It won the most from the blocking of two social networks of the recognized extremist company Meta. The mainstream of users was recorded in March, when the number of users increased from 27.5 to 40.6 million people.
But the domestic social network VKontakte did not receive a similar increase in the number of users. Its audience has grown from 46 million people in January to 50 million in July, according to Mediascope data. However, this may be due to the effect of a high base. The social network already covers all active Internet users in Russia.
