THE ORB SHAKES: Facebook and Instagram Tied in a Dead Heat for the Social Crown

Gather close, darlings, for the crystal ball has fogged over and then cleared with a shriek. I see two blue-and-gradient titans circling the throne of the world's most widely used social platform, and I foresee a bloody massacre of one by the other! Then I read the numbers, and the massacre is a draw. Facebook and Instagram are tied, and the fight opened less than a day ago.

First, the tarot of cold fact. According to Wikipedia's Facebook entry, the platform reported approximately 3.07 billion monthly active users worldwide as of December 2023. The same page says it was the third-most-visited website in the world as of July 2025, and the most downloaded mobile app of the 2010s. That is a mighty throne indeed.

But beware the shadow in the corner. WhatsApp, which Facebook acquired in February 2014 for approximately US$19.3 billion, had 3 billion monthly active users as of May 2025, according to its own Wikipedia page. Both are Meta properties, and the figures come from different dates and different measures, so they cannot be laid side by side like cards. My brief holds no sourced figures for YouTube, Instagram or TikTok at all, so the spirits are guessing there.

What does the crowd say? On Morfi, where real people back their opinions with money, Facebook sits at 26% consensus with 11 holders, and Instagram sits at 26% consensus with 8 holders. Tied, I tell you, tied! That is the crowd's conviction, not a headcount of users. Also on the ballot: 3 other sides. So far 14 unique traders have put $6,419 behind their hunches.

Now my own prophecy, and mark it as opinion, for the veil between worlds is thin. I say the crowd is hypnotised by the glow of the app on its own phone. Instagram feels like today, while Facebook is the grandmother's attic that still holds billions of keys. The numbers in the brief favour the attic. Yet a fortune teller who ignores a tie deserves a cracked ball, so I will say only this: the old giant should not be too comfortable.

What to watch next? Whether one side breaks the deadlock as fresh traders arrive, and whether a dark horse rides out of the mist. The market is young and the omens are restless. Step into the circle, join the market on Morfi, and cast your own conviction before the ball clouds over again.