Mediascope has estimated the changes in the Russian audience (Russians over 12 years old who used a web site or mobile application for at least a minute a day) of the main social networks and services from February 24 to March 15.

After Facebook and Instagram were blocked, users began to switch to other platforms. The most popular platform is Telegram, on which the number of its Russian users grew almost 1.5-fold.

Social networks that saw an increase in the number of users include:

• Telegram — from 31.2 to 45.5 million (+14.3 million);
• VKontakte — from 46.5 to 50.3 million (+3.8 million);
•  Odnoklassniki — from 19.8 to 20.9 million (+1.1 million);
• TikTok — from 33.1 to 33.4 million (+300 thousand).

Social networks where the number of users decreased include:

• Instagram — from 39 to 34.2 million (-4.8 million);
• Facebook — from 9.6 to 5.5 million (-4.1 million);
• Twitter — from 2.6 to 1.3 million (-1.3 million);
•  Snapchat - from 1.3 to 1.2 million (-100 thousand).

Users of WhatsApp (which, like Facebook and Instagram, belongs to the Meta corporation, but is not blocked in Russia) are also moving to Telegram. This is indirectly confirmed by the information provided by MegaFon: the company’s experts say that the percentage of Telegram in the total traffic of messengers for the first half of March had increased to 63% (a year ago it was 48% during the same period), while the percentage of WhatsApp, on the contrary, had decreased from 48% last year to 32%.

Yota’s experts also analyzed the Internet traffic of its customers in roaming from January 1 to March 14 of 2022. According to the company, most of the total Internet traffic came from Instagram (35%) and VKontakte (15%), and also Telegram (20%) and WhatsApp (12%).

Original (in Russian)