20 Trending Social Media Startups
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The ways in which modern life has been shaped by social media cannot be ignored.
Social media empowers people to form and nurture relationships, connects people with critical news and opinions, and enables people to form personal brand empires.
This is why countless entrepreneurs are launching new social media networks. Along with tools designed to help people increase engagement on existing platforms (like Instagram).
Read on to learn about 20 hot companies with novel approaches to providing social platforms and social media-related services.
1. Meesho
5-year search growth: 7500%
Search growth status: Regular
Year founded: 2015
Location: Bangalore, India
Funding: $1.1B (Debt Financing)
What they do: Meesho is an online e-commerce platform that helps sellers and buyers connect on social media. The app falls into the surging category of social commerce and has seen tremendous 10X user growth from 2020 to 2021. Facebook, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, and other investors participated in a 2021 fundraising round for the company that amounted to $300M.
2. VEED.IO
5-year search growth: 7600%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2018
Location: Essex, United Kingdom
Funding: $35M (Series A)
What they do: VEED.IO is a social media startup that provides an online video editing platform for content creators and businesses. Its platform enables users to edit and customize videos for various social media platforms, including Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, using a range of tools and templates. VEED.IO's solution aims to help users create high-quality and engaging video content quickly and easily, without the need for advanced editing skills or expensive software.
3. ShareChat
5-year search growth: 1400%
Search growth status: Regular
Year founded: 2015
Location: Bangalore, India
Funding: $1.7B (Series H)
What they do: ShareChat is an India-focused social media platform offering a newsfeed and content sharing experience to speakers of regional Indian dialects. The company has garnered the interest of tech powerhouses Google and Twitter, with the mention of Google potentially acquiring the platform at one point. ShareChat is now looking to raise $500M in their next funding round and have seen predictive valuations as high as $5B.
4. Exolyt
5-year search growth: 1800%
Search growth status: Peaked
Year founded: 2020
Location: Helsinki, Finland
Funding: Undisclosed (Pre-Seed)
What they do: Exolyt is a social media analytics tool that focuses on providing TikTok insights to marketing professionals, TikTok influencers, and content creators. The platform displays information such as video like timelines, profile comparisons, and video performance compared to average benchmarks. The Extravagant Company, a Helsinki-based business, is behind the analytics platform, which boasts more than 1M users per month.
5. Hinge
5-year search growth: 234%
Search growth status: Regular
Year founded: 2011
Location: New York City, New York
Funding: $20.6M (Series A)
What they do: Hinge is a dating app focused on genuine connections and long-term relationships. One differentiator of the service is their “We Met” feature, a rating tool for dates coordinated through the app that helps to hone their algorithm. In 2019, Match Group completed their acquisition of Hinge, adding the dating site to their sizable portfolio, which also includes OkCupid, Tinder, and PlentyOfFish.
6. Discord
5-year search growth: 241%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2015
Location: San Francisco, California
Funding: $995.4M (Secondary Market)
What they do: Discord was founded as a gaming communication platform by childhood friends Stan Vishnevskiy and Jason Citron and grew into a social network for people from all walks of life that now sees around 140M monthly users. The now 6-year-old company raised $100M in 2020 and is valued at $7B.
7. Songclip
5-year search growth: -100%
Search growth status: Peaked
Year founded: 2016
Location: San Francisco, CA
Funding: $22.9M (Series Unknown)
What they do: Songclip provides an API that allows apps to offer song searching and sharing capabilities to their users. The company's technology provides short music clips that are configured for optimal searchability. In the company's latest funding round, announced in March 2021, they raised upwards of $11M from Evolution VC Partners Gregg Smith and others, including the band members of AJR.
8. Public App
5-year search growth: 87%
Search growth status: Regular
Year founded: 2019
Location: Noida, India
Funding: $41.3M (Series Unknown)
What they do: Public App is a relatively young social media platform that helps users get information based on their location from local businesses and entities such as politicians and media companies. The company is focused on an Indian market and caters to speakers of several Indian languages. In Q1 2021, Public App raised $41 million in a funding round led by A91 Partners, on top of an additional $35M raised in 2020.
9. Bitclout
5-year search growth: 0%
Search growth status: Peaked
Year founded: 2021
Location: Osaka, Japan
Funding: $200M (Initial Coin Offering)
What they do: Bitclout is a social experience that enables the buying and selling of BitClout tokens that pull their value from the popularity of celebrities and other individuals. As more users purchase an individual's tokens, those tokens grow in value. Though the exact funding amount is unknown, as is the identity of the anonymous founder DiamondHands, the business has attracted many high-profile investors and is valued at around $1B.
10. Surf for Brands
5-year search growth: 125%
Search growth status: Regular
Year founded: 2018
Location: Toronto, Ontario
Funding: $5.4M (Seed)
What they do: Surf for Brands, formerly known as Trufan, is a social media marketing startup that connects brands with social data to help them analyze and make sense of their audience. Though still young, the company boasts names such as Netflix and Sony Music in their customer base and acquired two social tools, SocialRank and Playr.gg, in 2019 and 2020 to expand their marketing capabilities.
11. DojoMojo
5-year search growth: -100%
Search growth status: Peaked
Year founded: 2015
Location: New York City, New York
Funding: Undisclosed (Seed)
What they do: DojoMojo is a social media audience building and engagement platform for marketers. Companies can use Dojo Mojo's tools to grow their audience, run contests, communicate with fans by text, complete sponsored content transactions, and more. DojoMojo was founded in 2015 by Alex Song, Colin Darretta, and others to help companies capitalize on the power of partnership marketing.
12. Popshop Live
5-year search growth: 1400%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2016
Location: New York, New York
Funding: $23M (Series A)
What they do: Popshop Live is a social media startup that provides an interactive live shopping platform for businesses and creators. Its platform enables sellers to host live streaming events where they can showcase and sell their products to a global audience, while engaging with viewers through live chat and other interactive features. Popshop Live aims to help businesses and creators to reach new customers and increase sales through a fun and engaging shopping experience.
13. Cohley
5-year search growth: 1350%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2016
Location: New York City, New York
Funding: $6.8M (Debt Financing)
What they do: Cohley helps marketers create and test content for the digital platforms they manage. The company enables content generation through a network of skilled videographers/photographers and influencers known as “Cohley Creators.” In January 2020, the company announced that it had raised a total of $1.5M from Right Side Capital, Active Capital, and others.
14. CitizenLab
5-year search growth: -100%
Search growth status: Peaked
Year founded: 2015
Location: Brussels, Belgium
Funding: $3.4M (Grant)
What they do: CitizenLab aims to connect local governments with their constituents to boost engagement and reach. The company was founded out of a desire to modernize the inefficient, outdated ways many governing bodies use to communicate with their communities. Headquartered in Belgium, CitizenLab is used in over 18 countries.
15. Yubo
5-year search growth: 105%
Search growth status: Peaked
Year founded: 2015
Location: Paris, France
Funding: $65.7M (Series C)
What they do: Yubo is a Gen Z-focused social media platform that eschews influencers and ads and does not sell its user information. The platform brings in revenue through upselling its customers as opposed to more traditional methods. In a funding round announced in November 2020, Yubo raised $47.5M from Iris Capital, Gaia Capital Partners, and others.
16. Tagger Media
5-year search growth: 166%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2015
Location: Santa Monica, California
Funding: $23.5M (Series B)
What they do: Tagger Media offers a platform to help businesses more easily navigate and optimize influencer relationships. The platform gives brands the power to locate influencer talent, manage campaigns, and evaluate the success of their influencer marketing. In November 2021, Tagger Media raised $15M in their most recent funding round. The company announced that they plan to use this income to penetrate the content creator marketplace.
17. Quora
5-year search growth: 36%
Search growth status: Regular
Year founded: 2009
Location: Mountain View, California
Funding: $226M (Series D)
What they do: Quora is a question-and-answer platform that allows users to interact, share information, and gain knowledge. The platform was founded in 2009 by Charlie Cheever and Adam D'Angelo, former Facebook employees. In 2020, Quora transitioned to a primarily remote work-focused company spurred in part by the coronavirus pandemic.
18. Restream
5-year search growth: 358%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2014
Location: Austin, Texas
Funding: $53.4M (Series A)
What they do: Restream is a video streaming company used by clients ranging from gamers to celebrities. The company offers multiple-platform video streaming, scheduled streams, chat functionality, and video analytics. Alexander Khuda and Andrew Surzhynskyi and initially founded Restream with the intent to serve the gaming community.
19. AspireIQ
5-year search growth: 2700%
Search growth status: Regular
Year founded: 2013
Location: San Francisco, California
Funding: $27.3M (Series A)
What they do: AspireIQ helps social media creators sustain themselves on their content creation work while connecting brands with influencers to promote their products. The company focuses on three main solution areas: influencer marketing, community building, and a professional services arm that handles campaign management. In a 2020 report, Forrester recognized AspireIQ as the “best all-around current offering” for influencer marketing tools.
20. PearPop
5-year search growth: 1300%
Search growth status: Peaked
Year founded: 2020
Location: Los Angeles, California
Funding: $34M (Series A)
What they do: PearPop is a digital platform that allows TikTok Influencers to charge for social media collaborations. Social media users pay a price, which can be as much as a few thousand dollars, to partner on content. The company helps creators bring in money for their work while offering a popularity boost for the people with whom they partner. Financial backers include well-known names like Mark Cuban, Gary Vaynerchuk, and Snoop Dogg. Although PearPop initially began on TikTok, as of November 2021 the company has expanded and is now collaborating with Instagram and Twitter.
Conclusion
Social media changes fast, meaning the business world needs to adjust just as quickly to meet new needs and audiences. Looking at this list as a whole, the most significant trends that surface include influencer marketing, video, TikTok, and a focus on the Indian market.
These 20 social media startups may be young, but with innovative ideas and ample funding, they have the potential to thrive in today's digital economy.