20 Trending Social Media Companies & 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: 4,250%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2015
Location: Bangalore, India
Funding: $1.4B (Series Unknown)
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 after generating $690 million in revenue in 2023. With more than 150 million users, the company raised $275 million in new funding in May 2024.
2. VEED.IO
5-year search growth: 7,600%
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. Hinge
5-year search growth: 82%
Search growth status: Exploding
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.
4. Xiaohongshu
5-year search growth: 2,400%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2013
Location: Shanghai, China
Funding: $917.7M (Series E)
What they do: Xiaohongshu (commonly referred to as RED) is a Chinese social e-commerce platform. Users can share content like photos, vlogs, live streams, and videos similar to Instagram and Pinterest. The platform has grown to 200+ million monthly active users. In March 2024, announced they made their first profit of $500 million in 2023.
5. Discord
5-year search growth: 155%
Search growth status: Regular
Year founded: 2015
Location: San Francisco, California
Funding: $995.4M (Series I)
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 200 million monthly users.
6. Beacons.ai
5-year search growth: 6,600%
Search growth status: Regular
Year founded: 2018
Location: San Francisco, California
Funding: $29.2M (Series A)
What they do: Beacons.ai is an AI-powered link in bio and social media marketing platform. This tool allows creators to engage their audience, manage brand deals, track income, and organize their business with media kits and payment features.
The startup has raised funding from notable investors, including Naval Ravikant, A16z, and Y Combinator. Currently, more than 3 million creators use Beacons to grow their personal brands.
7. Taplio
5-year search growth: 4,600%
Search growth status: Regular
Year founded: 2021
Location: Paris, France
Funding: Undisclosed
What they do: Taplio is an AI-driven LinkedIn automation tool that allows businesses and individuals to grow their presence on the platform. Beyond account management and automation, Taplio includes a suite of generative AI tools to create new posts or turn existing YouTube videos and articles into LinkedIn posts. The completely bootstrapped company generated over $420,000 in revenue in 2023 and currently supports 6,200+ customers.
8. Public App
5-year search growth: 79%
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. Today, Public App has more than 60 million users.
9. Devi AI
5-year search growth: 283%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2022
Location: Sheridan, Wyoming
Funding: Undisclosed
What they do: Devi is an AI-powered social media assistant and lead generation tool. The platform includes access to 5 AI assistants that help users automate repetitive business tasks like lead generation, monitoring, outreach, content creation, and scheduling on platforms like Facebook groups, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Reddit. Available as a Chrome plugin, the company currently has over 6,000 active users.
10. Surf for Brands
5-year search growth: 14%
Search growth status: Peaked
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: 67%
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: 4,900%
Search growth status: Regular
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: 197%
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.” The startup has worked with notable brands, including Orange Theory, CVS Pharmacy, and Nature's Way.
14. CitizenLab
5-year search growth: 27%
Search growth status: Peaked
Year founded: 2015
Location: Brussels, Belgium
Funding: $7.3M (Series A)
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: 37%
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: 2,800%
Search growth status: Regular
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: -13%
Search growth status: Peaked
Year founded: 2009
Location: Mountain View, California
Funding: $301M (Series Unknown)
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 January 2024, Quora raised $75 million to grow its AI chat platform, Poe.
18. Restream
5-year search growth: 197%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2014
Location: Austin, Texas
Funding: $56.8M (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. Aspire
5-year search growth: -5%
Search growth status: Regular
Year founded: 2013
Location: San Francisco, California
Funding: $27.3M (Series A)
What they do: Aspire 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.
20. Farcaster
5-year search growth: 5,500%
Search growth status: Regular
Year founded: 2020
Location: Los Angeles, California
Funding: $30M (Series B)
What they do: Farcaster is a decentralized social media protocol built on the Ethereum blockchain. This open-source platform allows developers to create decentralized social network applications like Warpcast on the Optimism network.
Farcaster gives users complete control over their data, securely storing interactions and posts off-chain through smart contracts. Currently, Farcaster has 314,000 total users and an average of 57,000 monthly active users.
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.
