TIL Twitter has a relatively-small number of employees

It only takes 140-characters or less to send a Tweet and it takes under 1,000 employees to operate the company according to research done by social media...

Scarlett Madison

Published June 3, 20128:08 AM EDT1 minute read

It only takes 140-characters or less to send a Tweet and it takes under 1,000 employees to operate the company according to research done by social media firm Social Jumpstart. In fact, Disney's Club Penguin, a social network for kids, has more employees. LinkedIn has nearly 1,800 employees and Facebook has over 3,000.

Comparing the different leaders in social media, it's easy to see which niches take the most effort. Social news site Reddit, for example, has 11 employees servicing "The Front Page of the Internet", a site that can send hundreds of thousands of unique visitors in hours to a picture of someone's cat. All of the interest in Pinterest has equated to needing 37 employees, while social discovery site Tagged needs 150 employees and is growing.

This infographic takes a look at the leaders in each niche, including revenue, usage, employees, and the other players chasing them. Conspicuously listed below Facebook is Google+. Are they really a competitor again?