Let’s start with Instagram

When it comes to hashtag mentions and the sheer volume of animal-related Instagram posts, it’s the hounds that have the advantage in 2018. Just take a look at the differences in post numbers in cats vs. dogs:

The folks of Instagram are posting around 23 million more #dog posts than #cat posts, and 11 million more are showing off their #dogsofinstagram tan their feline counterparts.

However, the cats still have one claw still hooked into the jumper of Instagram superiority. While dogs win out on the volume of posts, the most famous cats of Instagram have a larger number of followers than the most famous dogs.

Take Nala_cat for example. She is top feline Instagram royalty, with a fluffy 3.5 million followers.

Then take Instagram’s most famous dog, Maru the Shiba. He may be the most-followed dog on Instagram, but his following maxes out at just 2.6 million, a whopping 900,000 less than Nala Cat. 

So what does this tell us? Perhaps because cats are the internet veterans, they have simply established a stronger presence and following compared to dogs, as the relative newcomers. 

Or perhaps it goes deeper than just time. Perhaps it’s down to a chemistry between Instagram as a platform and the nature of cats. Instagram is the only social media platform on which cats outperform dogs, and it also has a reputation for vanity – as do cats. Let’s face it, cats love posing and preening, and they care much more about their appearance and cleanliness than dogs. Instagram is clearly their online natural habitat.

Facebook friends

From here on in, the celebrity dogs are dominating in a big way. 

Even the famous and most-loved cat on Earth, Grumpy Cat, doesn’t so much as brush the legs of the most famous dog when we get into the realms of Facebook profile likes. 

Grumpy Cat’s profile has a very respectable 8.7 million likes and 8.5 million followers. But these figures are well truly buried in the backyard with the bones by canine Facebook star, Boo the Dog. 

Boo, everybody’s favourite cheeky-faced pomeranian, has an unbelievable 17.1 million likes and 16.7 million followers. That’s more than double the interest that poor old Grumpy Cat receives, which isn’t likely to improve his mood. 

Continuing the platform-to-animal chemistry theory, perhaps this turning of the popularity tables is due to Facebook being more suited to the more typically canine characteristics – social interaction for one. Dogs are notoriously more social creatures than cats, and Facebook is a much more interactive and varied platform than Instagram. 

Does Twitter Come into it?

Twitter is a strange one. It’s not quite so well-suited to the sharing of adorable animal photos and videos, so animal profiles in general don’t tend to perform too well - so this one is a bit of a mixed bag.

There are nearly 40 more #cat posts than there are #dog posts per hour on Twitter, and 8 more #DogsOfTwitter posts than #CatsOfTwitter posts - meaning that it's the moggies who are talked about more on Twitter.

However, even on this less pet-friendly channel, the dogs still pull ahead in follower numbers.

Twitter’s most famous cat is the adorable @Sockington aka Sockamillion, with 1.4 million followers, closely followed by Grumpy Cat, with 1.29 million followers. 

Twitter’s most famous dog, on the other hand, outperforms both kitties. MaggieHeroDog is a very photogenic hero service dog, and has an impressive 1.83 million viewers.

Now, Twitter is known as more of a news-based social media channel, so perhaps this contributes to Maggie’s tweeting success over the cats. As a service dog, Maggie is always active and has a lot of news to share, making her profile more appealing.

 What do Reddit, YouTube and Google Trends show?

And Reddit?

Yep, dogs win again. 

Reddit’s ‘Aww’ subreddit is a place for people to find all things cute and cuddly - the top posts are well and truly dominated by the canines.
in the top 25 posts, 17 are of dogs and a measly three posts are about cats.

But surely YouTube is still cat-centric?

Nope!

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There are over 10 million more dog-related videos on YouTube than there are cat-related. This means more people are uploading the video antics of their dogs than their cats, which indicates that dogs are overtaking cats in popularity here too.

Oh, cats. What happened?

Even in general worldwide search trends, dogs are getting all the interest. According to data from Google Trends, ‘dogs’ as a search term has consistently been twice as popular as ‘cats’, since trends began in 2004. This is mirrored in UK search trends, with interest in ‘dogs’ as a search term being more than twice as popular as ‘cats’, with the gap widening more and more in recent years.

So, why do we like our pets?

And what puts us off...

These general trends reflect our social media findings, that dogs appear to be gradually becoming more popular than cats in terms of followers and post volumes. Perhaps this is down to the fact that dogs are more social than cats, and often have much more ‘human-like’ behavioural tendencies that cause us to be more drawn to them than we are to the much more socially independent cats.

Or perhaps the recent shift is due to the explosion in popularity of certain dog breeds, with pugs, dachshunds and french bulldogs all becoming ‘trendy’ across social media in the last five years. Photos and videos of breeds such as these practically guarantee likes and follows in abundance these days, so perhaps more people are choosing dogs over cats for a chance at social media fame. 

Whatever the reasons behind it, it’s now a dog eat dog cat world we’re living in, according to the latest internet pet popularity stats. All that is left to do now is to say a big congratulations to the canines. Felines, perhaps your internet presence will one day be restored to its former glory. Until then, commiserations.

Why not treat your pooch or feline today and visit Pond Planet for all the latest pet supplies!