Social Media Messaging Users to Reach 4.3 Billion by 2027

A new study by Juniper Research forecasts that 4.3 billion users globally will use social media messaging by 2027. This would represent an increase of 95 million users over one year.

This growth is being driven by rising smartphone adoption and improved network infrastructure across emerging markets, which are essential for social media apps to function. The growing reach is strengthening the appeal of social media messaging as part of enterprise communications strategies, with social media messaging offering more robust security measures and broader opportunities for user engagement, compared to rival mobile messaging channels.

“Social media messaging allows users to independently verify an enterprise’s identity by reviewing its account profile. This prevents enterprises from being spoofed and, in turn, protects users, which will be compelling to enterprises in a high-fraud environment,” explained Ardit Ballhysa, Senior Research Analyst at Juniper Research.

The research identified a lack of support for social media channels from mobile messaging vendors as limiting growth in social media messaging. This is due to a lack of standardised messaging application programming interfaces (APIs) from social media platforms, which is restricting the value enterprises gain from social media messaging.

“Despite fraud prevention and user engagement benefits, there is a clear lack of support for social media channels across mobile messaging vendors. These vendors must incorporate social media channels into their omnichannel offerings, especially as agentic AI begins to proliferate – further boosting the channel’s appeal amongst enterprises,” Ballhysa concluded.