The rapid emergence and growth of social media platforms across the globe and the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) countries had a significant impact on commerce and business. While extensive research was carried out on social media usage in the GCC, the varying presence across platforms has so far not been investigated. The presented research, based on data from a commercial data provider, focuses on seven major social media platforms, namely Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Pinterest and the presence of e-commerce companies in the GCC countries under these platforms. The Chi-Square test of independence was employed for proportional statistics, whereas Bonferroni correction was employed for post-hoc testing of social media platform presence. The analysis results identified Instagram, Facebook and Twitter as the most common social media platforms overall across the GCC region, supported with statistical significance. However, there was strong heterogeneity across countries with respect to the presence of social media platforms. The projected outcomes can be employed in digital marketing planning, resource allocation, consumer engagement, business development, and service quality assessment in e-commerce in the GCC while the methodology can be adopted to any select benchmark group of countries.