In June 2019, former Snapchat chief strategy officer Imran Khan set out to shake up the marketplace landscape, including Amazon, when he launched ecommerce platform Verishop. We recently spoke with Khan about how Verishop is helping direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands scale, as well as its ongoing efforts to give consumers a new way to discover products.

Retailers across Western Europe are pioneering the use of AI to boost digital sales, and new options for delivery and returns are emerging. Yet Europe’s main markets have been slow to embrace social commerce.

Pinterest surpassed Snapchat as the third-biggest social media platform in the US in 2019, and it will continue to stay ahead in the coming years, according to our latest social user estimates.

This report looks at how digital technology fits into the daily lives of US kids—digital natives who, compared with teens and young adults, aren’t really all that digital.

eMarketer principal analyst Debra Aho Williamson discusses one thing that summed up 2019 for her, as well as some of her predictions for 2020, focusing on Facebook.

In 2019, Instagram's US user growth rate will have dropped to single digits for the first time to 6.7%, down from 10.1% in 2018. Starting in 2020, and through the end of our forecast period in 2023, we estimate that the social media platform will grow slower than previously expected.

eMarketer senior forecasting analyst Oscar Orozco explores our latest adoption numbers for Snapchat worldwide and the impact of face filters that went viral.

eMarketer forecasting analyst Peter Vahle discusses our latest adoption figures for Snapchat in India, Indonesia and Japan, and the success of recent platform additions.

eMarketer global director of public relations Douglas Clark compares our latest US adoption figures for young adults on Facebook against those of its sister platform Instagram and fierce competitor Snapchat.

Though social commerce conversions will remain a challenge, the mid-funnel opportunity is growing. Instagram’s continued rollout of shoppable content features is helping brands and influencers spotlight product content and forge a better path to purchase. Pinterest has also introduced features to make it easier for retailers to upload and promote product content. And video-first platforms Snapchat and TikTok are both testing shoppable content features.

With 2020 shaping up to be a chaotic year, these are the video trends marketers will need to pay attention to.

eMarketer vice president of business development Marissa Coslov explores Facebook adoption in the UK by age group and why the platform is losing teens and young adults.

eMarketer junior forecasting analyst Nazmul Islam compares our mobile messaging app usage numbers with our mobile social networking usage figures and the factors behind the increasing gap.

Facebook will have 1.73 billion worldwide users in 2019 and will add a quarter of a billion more users by 2023. These gains are primarily happening in developing countries, while developed markets including South Korea, Japan and France are shedding users.

Instagram will remain the world’s second-largest social network in 2019, with 788.4 million users. Growth will primarily come from emerging or developing economies, including Russia and India, but every country that we track will add new users in 2019.

Snapchat will have 293.0 million users in 2019, up 14.3% on the previous year and outpacing the growth rates of Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Growth has returned to core developed markets, while the pace of growth in developing markets is significant.

In 2019, the number of social network users worldwide will grow by 5.9% and approach 3 billion. By 2023, almost 80% of the online population will visit social networks at least monthly.

Twitter’s plateauing user growth has been evident for the past few years. But its user base is stable and ticking upward. We expect it to maintain its substantial influence worldwide as a platform for political discourse and real-time events coverage.

For this update, we look at Instagram's test to remove likes, the launch of Facebook Pay, Twitter's new feature that allows users to hide replies and Snapchat's new longer video ad format, as well as an update on political advertising. It also includes a preview of our latest social network user forecast, which will be discussed in detail in our upcoming social network users report collection, publishing on December 12.

Facebook users in France and Germany are leaving the platform even faster than expected. For the second forecast in a row, we have downgraded Facebook user growth in both countries, as younger users shift to other platforms. In France this year, Facebook will experience a decline in users for the first time, whereas Germany experienced its first drop in users in 2018.