Since Facebook's inception and subsequent mega-popularity, forecasters have been obsessively predicting the "next big thing" in social. Here are some year-end stats on the big players and who we can expect to dominate in 2015.

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  • Despite everyone and their mother claiming to invent the "next Facebook", it seems as if the original version is here to stay. The website has 1.35 billion active users a month, which, as the online population of the world is numbered at 3 billion, means that nearly 1/3 of all people online have Facebook accounts.
  • Snapchat outpaced Instagram for growth this past year,
, boasting a 56%,
  • rise in users. Here's to hoping that wasn't all just sexy images.
  • And the number that has been making headlines most recently: Instagram has
, 300 million users,
  • . Which means that the photo-sharing app is ahead of Twitter, who in October had
, 284 million users,
  • . Instagram users share 70 million photos per day and have shared over 30 billion since the site first launched.
  • Pinterest took the lead in growth, with a 57% bump up in users. Their mobile component did quite well, ranking in the top five social and messaging apps.
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However, no matter how much growth these platforms boast, it doesn't necessarily mean that they will be able to disrupt the status quo. There is a huge leap from 300 million users to over 1 billion users.  And a lot of the things that people complain about on Facebook (ads, not private enough) would probably all be facets of these other social media platforms, if they were a gigantic as Facebook.

Even Instagram, which right now seems to be the Internet's darling in terms of privacy and having limited amounts of followers, is changing its model, as users are now suggested friends to follow. It is not crazy to imagine that the once intimate experience of Instagram's feed might soon be similar to Facebook, where everyone from your brother's girlfriend to your former boss is liking your photos.

Also, when analyzing the trajectory of these social media platforms it is important to remember who is, in fact, boss when it comes to ownership. And that would be Facebook. The stats from Tech Crunch:

Between Facebook’s 1.35 billion, Messenger’s 500 million, and WhatsApp’s 600 million users, Facebook has developed a jaw dropping mobile footprint.

While it might pain us to say it and it certainly isn't our favorite platform (Vine!) Facebook seems to be king for the near future.