This Chart Shows The Intense Competition Among Social Media Companies

Social media companies are battling it out tooth-and-nail for market share in the massive, high-growth industry. Facebook Inc FB’s 121-percent gain and Twitter Inc TWTR’s 66-percent loss highlight just how much is at stake for these companies and their investors.

Facebook has emerged as the clear winner in the past few years, but a new chart from Statista highlights just how intense the battle for second place is.

The chart is based on analysis from AudienceProject, which looked at app usage among Americans. AudienceProject looked at what percentage of smartphone owners use each of the major social media apps “several times a day.”

Facebook and its WhatsApp messaging service topped the results by a large margin, with 53 percent of Americans using Facebook and 44 percent using WhatsApp several times each day.

However, the next four apps in the rankings are incredibly separated by only 3 percent.

Alphabet Inc GOOGL GOOG’s YouTube holds a razor-thin edge with 35 percent of people using the app several times daily. Snap Inc SNAP’s Snapchat comes in next at 34 percent, followed by Facebook’s Instagram at 33 percent and Twitter at 32 percent.

The rivalry between Instagram and Snapchat, which offer extremely similar services, is still too close to call at this point.

Back in February, Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry warned investors that the social media space is becoming saturated and the easy money has already been made when it comes to social media stocks. So far in 2017, Chowdhry’s bearish thesis hasn’t played out. Snap is the only stock of the four that has delivered negative year-to-date returns.

Related Link: Analyst Says Social Media Space Is Saturated, Sees Snapchat As 'Total Junk'