Social media have become not only a new space for communication, but also a place for self-expression, work, shopping, searching for the necessary information and people. You can learn a lot about a person from a person’s profile on a social network, and many people use this. This includes trading companies that, using information about a person, select the advertisements that are shown to him.
It is hardly possible to find a person who is not and has never been on any social network. However, if you are not registered anywhere or use only one social platform, then you probably want to expand your interaction and are looking for a social network in which you are ready to register and start communicating and sharing with others.
To make it easier for you to choose, and also to understand the general trend in the development of social networks in the world, we have prepared an article analyzing the 7 most popular social networks in the world. Each of them has its own peculiarity, although there are also those that are similar.
The most popular social network in the world. On this moment More than 700 million people use Facebook every day. The social network was founded back in 2004 by Harvard University student Mark Zuckerberg. At that time, the current billionaire and one of the most influential people in the world was just beginning his journey in the digital world and was actively experimenting with code, writing small programs and websites.
Together with his neighbors with whom he lived while studying at the university, Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskowitz and Chris Hughes, he created a portal where university students could communicate, exchange news and stay in touch. The first name of the small site was Thefacebook. Only university students could. After Mark decided to expand the audience of the site, other students from the American city of Boston were allowed to register. A little later, it was possible to create an account for any student who studied in America. In order to register, you had to have an email on the .edu domain, which is common to the educational system. And already in September 2006, all Internet users received access to the site. To register, you had to be over 16 years old and have an email on any of the existing domains.
Now the student project has grown to incredible proportions; Zuckerberg himself hardly imagined how far his desire to unite the student community would go. Facebook is one of the top five websites visited by users around the world. The active audience is almost 3 billion people, and it is growing every day, since registration on the site is free and, according to the developers, will always remain free.
Now Facebook Inc. there are other popular social networks under the leadership. One of them is Instagram, which will be discussed below.
Functions
On Facebook, you can create a person's page - a profile in which the user talks about himself. He also uses this profile to communicate with the friends he adds. He can write messages on his profile “wall”, as well as leave messages on other people’s walls. Upload photos, videos to the wall. You can also leave comments under other people’s or your own posts on the walls of friends and your own. Additional feature— you can copy other people’s posts from the wall to yourself and save them indicating the author of the post. That is, repost.
You can create interest groups, as well as play games created by third-party programmers based on the platform.
Convenient for privacy, the user controls what part of the information on his page is available to which users, and can also block people who bother him on the social network.
In the spring of 2016, the function of live video broadcasting to your profile became available. Users can connect to it and watch live, and also watch later if the page owner saved the broadcast. Thanks to this, it has become easier to share videos from travel or everyday life, and you can also quickly answer questions that viewers leave right during the broadcast.
Since the fall of 2017, it has become possible to upload stories to your profile - photos or videos that are shown separately and available for viewing only for a day. Thanks to stories, you can quickly communicate interactively with subscribers.
Instagram is mobile app and a social network in which you can take photos and videos, process the photos using filters, and then distribute the photo using your profile. You can leave a media entry of 2000 characters. Short text using emoji emoticons and other text elements.
It all started with the creation of an application for creating and processing photos called Instagram. This application allowed you to take unusual square-shaped photographs and was aimed more at nostalgia lovers and hipsters, because square photos were taken by Polaroid and Kodak Instamatic instant cameras. It was also possible to process these photos using filters built into the application and share them on other social networks, as well as in this application with other users.
Its history begins in 2010. Gradually, Instagram is acquiring the features of a social network. Hashtags have been added so that you can easily find photos about other users. Since 2011, the application has been actively updated and new features are added to it.
At first, the application was only available for iPhones, but for many years it has been a cross-platform application and you can even access your profile from a computer using your username and password. There are now more than a million users on Instagram.
Functions
In the summer of 2013, a function appeared to record videos for 15 seconds. Now you can add videos to your profile that are no more than a minute long, and there is also a separate IGTV section where you can add long videos, so Instagram has now become a platform for uploading videos. You can also conduct live broadcasts in order to quickly answer questions from viewers or broadcast life events to a social network.
There are also stories - these are photos or videos that appear in a separate column and are stored only for 24 hours. Using stories, you can conduct surveys and quizzes, ask questions and answer them promptly; the user can upload several stories per day, each of which is deleted after 24 hours.
Users can comment on stories and posts, leave comments under their own posts, and also repost other people’s posts indicating the author’s page in their story or profile.
In addition, there is the saving of stories. The user sees all his stories permanently if he goes to a special section. He can also pin profile stories above photos so that all users can view one or more of them.
Doing business through Instagram has gained great development. Shops, confectioners, psychologists and everyone create their own page where they offer services, post photos of the product and interact with clients. Accounts are available not only for small companies for which this is currently the only platform for interaction. Global brands also have their own pages on the Internet, which they use for advertising campaigns and to increase brand loyalty.
Youtube
YouTube is a video hosting site with elements of a social network. The name comes from the English words you - you, you and tube - pipe. Previously, in America, trumpet was a colloquial name for old convex televisions, similar to how in Russian old televisions and televisions are generally called “boxes”.
Users of the site can upload their own videos of any length, as well as watch other people’s videos, subscribe to “channels” that produce and post videos in order to be aware of new published videos. In addition, users can add comments, create their own playlists with their favorite videos and thematic selections from other channels on their channel. Also rate the video by liking, disliking and commenting, and write comments to it.
Because it's so easy to watch, download, and interact with videos on the site, it has become the most popular video hosting site and one of the most popular sites in the world. There you can watch not only videos from amateur authors, but also recordings of television programs that are uploaded by the television channels themselves to increase audience coverage. Also films, clips, trailers for new films, news, educational and entertainment programs. Also video blogs about people’s lives, videos with recipes, tutorials for training and a wide variety of video content.
The video hosting company originated in California in 2005. The first video that was uploaded to the service is an amateur filming of one of the developers, his video from the zoo. It is still available for viewing.
Already in 2006, the YouTube service was bought by the giant Google. Since then, the service has begun to develop more actively, attracting millions of new users every year who watch or upload videos.
Functions
In addition to the basic functions of interacting with simple videos, there are several additional ones:
- Monetization. In order to earn money from each impression of your video (money comes from advertising that is shown before, after or in the middle of the video), you need to reach 1,000 subscribers who will watch 4,000 hours of video on the channel, and also be of legal age.
- Community tab. With its help, a user who has 1,000 subscribers can leave an entry with photos and links in the subscription feed. It is usually used by bloggers to additionally notify the user about the release of a new video, since the video may not always appear in the user’s subscription feed due to internal Youtube algorithms and service failures.
- “Stories” tab. It is similar to stories on Instagram and serves to provide additional prompt notification to subscribers about how things are progressing on the channel.
- Panoramic videos. Thanks to this function, the user can upload videos to the service that were shot with a special camera. It allows you to see everything in 360 degrees. The user can change the viewing angle by turning the phone, and also by turning their head if watching a video with glasses virtual reality.
Live broadcasts. Just like on Instagram, you can broadcast live here, then save them on the channel, communicate with viewers via broadcasts, or record videos about current events.
In addition, the user can change the quality of the video he is watching in order to be able to watch videos at low Internet speeds without delays. Also recently, a feature has appeared to increase video speed up to 2 times. A specific user can increase the video speed by a quarter, half, three quarters or twice in order to spend one and a half or 2 times less time watching the required video.
TikTok
TikTok is a social network that allows you to create short videos inside the application with music available in the application’s audio library, as well as record live broadcasts for quick communication with viewers and leave comments under the posts of other users. Due to the fact that the audience is growing very quickly, the application is also included in the list of the most popular social networks.
The network was launched in September 2016 in China. Now it is the most popular platform for short videos in the Middle Kingdom. It is gradually gaining popularity in other countries of the world. The application has a large number of downloads, the number of its users is increasing exponentially. Now there are about half a billion users from different countries peace.
It is worth noting that the majority of TikTok's audience are teenagers who record videos of dancing to popular music and thus gain approval from or interact with peers.
In addition, the application has analogues in which you can also create videos and upload them to the application in order to communicate with other users. One of them is Likee. The application is only available in App Store for iOS devices.
Functions
Initially, the application became popular due to the fact that it was possible to create short videos for popular compositions and add various effects that were quite simple, but interesting for users who were not accustomed to video editing. For example, you could add wings, fireworks, change the color of the video, change your voice, and so on.
After that, the number of filters for videos increased, and many more songs were added to the audio library. In addition, challenges have become common in the application - videos of the same format that are recorded by different people.
You can respond to another user's video with your own video, or create video pairings, where there are two videos that stand vertically next to each other and users interact as if they were one video.
In contact with
VKontakte is a Russian social network that has its headquarters in St. Petersburg. The site is available in almost 100 languages, but is especially popular among users living in the countries of the former USSR. Using this social network, you can share photos and videos with friends, leave messages and posts on the wall, communicate in interest groups, follow the lives of bloggers, stars and ordinary users.
You can also listen to music and play browser games alone or with your friends. In terms of functionality and content, the social network is similar to Facebook, but many users find the VKontakte interface much simpler. In addition, VK does not require additional application on your mobile phone to communicate.
Also, VKontakte has a much stronger and more developed Russian-speaking community than the similar social network in America. And the abundance of content in understandable language attracts users from the CIS countries.
Like a foreign website, VKontakte was originally a social network in which students and graduates of Russian universities communicated. The site positioned itself as a platform for quick and convenient communication, finding friends, and tried to be modern and try things that were previously unavailable to RuNet users. Now it is the most popular social network in Russia.
Now this is one of the most popular sites in the post-Soviet space. There are almost a billion registered users from all over the world. Registration on the site is free and available by phone number. Linking a page to a number is one of the security requirements to ensure that a user’s page cannot be captured by attackers and turned into a platform for sending spam, as well as malicious links and fraud on behalf of this person.
Initially, the social network was available to students and recent graduates from Russian universities. However, in order to register, you had to receive an invitation from a user who already has a profile on the network, and then indicate your real first and last name. However, registration was soon opened and an advertising campaign was launched in order to attract new users. Since then, the social network VKontakte has only been developing and gaining popularity.
Functions
The functionality of the social network VKontakte is similar to what Western Facebook offers, since the networks have the same model. There is a user page. He can add other users as friends, create his own audio and video library from files that have already been uploaded by other users, or upload his own. You can share photos, videos, leave posts on your or users’ walls, comment on everything, add and create groups and communities of interest.
Thanks to the subscription feed, the user can see everything that his friends publish, as well as the communities to which he is subscribed.
Due to the fact that any user can add music and videos there, there are many songs, films, and videos on VKontakte. However, if the copyright holder complains, they will be removed from there.
The site has the ability to add history and create group chats. The site often adds updates with new features.
Twitter is a social network for exchanging short messages and small media files with users. The name comes from the English to tweet - to tweet, chat, which is why the social network has a bird logo. The format of this social network is called a microblog; the user does not pay for publishing posts and reading his subscriptions in the feed.
Twitter was created by Jack Dorsey in 2006, after which Twitter began to rapidly gain popularity, since at that time it was the fastest and convenient way exchange information and posts with users. However, initially the social network had a limit on the number of characters that can be written in one message - 140. Later, the developers increased this number to 280 characters.
The service now has almost half a million registered accounts. These are both ordinary users and stars who use it as quick way conveying information to their fans, answering their questions and expressing their opinions on current events. There are also accounts for brands and music groups.
Twitter is mainly used from a phone through a fairly convenient mobile application, but it is possible to access it from a computer or in mobile version in the browser on your phone.
Functions
Using a microblog, users can leave short messages, attach photos or videos to posts, comment, repost and subscribe to other users in order to see their posts in their feed and interact with them. In addition, you can like and block the user. It is possible to maintain a private blog that will be seen only by a limited number of users or by no one at all.
Pinterest is social service. In it, users can add images to collections by topic and share them with other users. The main difference from Instagram is that Pinterest is a network where very aesthetic pictures of any thematic focus are posted. So, there are images of clothing, cities, food, as well as a selection of paintings and photos of stars. In addition, users often post their drawings, tattoos, etc. there.
Pinterest is used by many as a source of inspiration. It can be compared with Google images, there are also a lot there, but they are of higher quality, selected by users and elaborated.
conclusions
As you can see, with the development of social networks, the possibilities of each person are now almost limitless. A person can develop himself and his abilities, turn his profile into a platform for business, or start his own blog and develop from it.
However, you should never forget about safety on the Internet, as well as the fact that in addition to social networks, there is a real life that needs to be developed and established with no less diligence than a virtual page on the Internet.
Unfortunately, dependence on social networks, the Internet, likes, and positive comments from complete strangers happens too often. And an overly reverent attitude towards a social network, replacing real life with a virtual one leads to depression, the development of complexes and can seriously negatively affect the psyche.
When registering on any social network, be clearly aware that this will take up a lot of your time, which could be spent on self-development, and you should also understand that social networks entertain as much as they frustrate. Make a promise to yourself in advance not to worry about stupid people online, clearly limit your visits to social networks per day and try to spend time on the Internet not only for entertainment, but also usefully - subscribe to interesting and educational blogs that will broaden your horizons and allow you to become more social and an active person.
The number of social media users is growing exponentially. Some services are more popular, others less popular. However, everything is changing, and it is quite possible that while you are studying this rating, some previously unknown social network will take the lead.
Facebook with the number of accounts exceeding 1.2 billion. The network, founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, has held first place in the world TOPs since its inception.
Google+, the number of users of which is approaching the 600 million mark. The social network, founded in 2001 by Google, moves up and down in the rankings, however, it is invariably among the ten most successful projects.
Twitter with half a billion users. The presence of a mini-blog on this social network has become a real trend, because the most influential people on the planet have accounts on Twitter.
Sina Weibo, the number of accounts exceeds 500 million. This is perhaps the only social network from our rating that does not have a Russian-language interface. However, it doesn’t need this, since it is designed for friendly residents of the Middle Kingdom who want to communicate exclusively with each other and have been doing this successfully since 2009. 
In contact with is a social network created in Russia in 2006 and is one of the most successful domestic projects to date. The number of VKontakte users is rapidly approaching 300 million, which means that the social network is used not only in our country.
Badoo with an audience of almost 230 million, it is an international dating site with a full set of social network functions. 
Classmates- another well-known Russian project that has become a world leader. Since 2006, the number of Odnoklassniki users has increased from 0 to 210 million people.
Instagram is a social network that came out into the world in 2010 and quickly moved to the top of the rankings thanks to the ability to share photos and videos with many users. 
Pinterest is a social network whose 200 million users can share a wide variety of ideas with each other, from innovative business solutions to holiday pie recipes. 
Flickr. Almost 70 million users of this social network exchange a huge number of photos every day. 
MySpace, created in 2003, it has about 50 million accounts and is a social network in its classic form. Exchange of messages, opinions, photos and videos, dating, blog platform, in a word, everything that is required for a pleasant pastime.
MeetUp– a social network whose purpose is to unite people in groups for real communication. More than 40 million users have found friends with similar interests here and have a great time with them without the Internet. 
Tagged. Almost 40 million users of this social network can meet and communicate with each other.
Askfm– a place where you can get an answer to any question, because from more than 38 million answers you can definitely choose the right one. 
ClassMates- an English-language prototype of the Russian Odnoklassniki, created back in 1995, but did not achieve equally impressive results. The project's audience is about 15 million people. 
Orkut– another project from Google, which did not become a hit in the USA and Europe, but was very popular among residents of Latin America, India and a number of other countries. The project is currently closed and is being moved to the Hello social network platform.
Today people communicate more and more virtual space. The Internet and mobile devices allow you to do this almost anywhere. The most popular social networks play the role of a kind of bridge between vast distances and at the same time a small state, each of which has its own rules.
Today people communicate more and more on social networks
The concept of a social network itself has already become quite blurred, since many of those virtual platforms that are called by this name are instant messengers, video streamers, video hosting sites, and photo hosting sites. But nevertheless, all these communities are recognized as social networks.
List of the most popular Russian social networks. networks differs from similar global networks. Mainly on the first two lines:
- In contact with
- Skype
- Google +
- Viber
- Facebook Messenger
This is the list we have for 2016.
VK.com
VK has traditionally been the leader among all other social networks in Russia and many CIS countries for many years. Last October, Contact turned ten years old, and it remains a virtual monopolist in the sphere of online communication among Russians. The average daily audience is about 64 million visitors.
Every year, both the mobile application and the web version receive new features that are present in other social networks. One of these was the appearance of “Stories”, with the help of which you can tell your friends and subscribers about your life in videos or photographs. In addition, money transfers and voice messages known to many appeared.
OK.ru is the fifth most popular Russian website. Odnoklassniki constantly steps on the heels of Contact: 51 million users per day - but nevertheless can never catch up with it.
This year on social media. networks appeared broadcasts from groups, money transfers, and the “OK Video” application. Odnoklassniki also tries to provide users with the maximum number of communication opportunities. It is worth noting that both sites: VK and Odnoklassniki belong to Mail.Ru Group.
Facebook ended up in third place largely due to the existence of its Russian counterpart - VKontakte. Since it is more convenient for us to use Pavel Durov’s brainchild, and many have many more friends there, 6 million Russians log on to Facebook every day.
Skype
Skype cannot be called a full-fledged social network. network, since it is still deprived of many functions inherent in the same VK. The main feature of Skype has been and will be video calls. Yes, there are chats and the ability to add personal information, but most people use Skype specifically for video or audio communications.
Despite the emergence of such programs as Viber, WhatsApp, FaceTime, Skype does not lose its popularity. Perhaps this is because many are not yet sufficiently accustomed to new substitutes for the old, reliable program.
Google +
Google + is an unsuccessful attempt by Google to create its own social network. net. Unsuccessful because the popularity of Google + is decreasing every year. It’s only a matter of time before there are no users left there at all.
The most interesting thing is that Google + ranks fifth in our country. In other countries, it is practically not quoted at all due to low popularity.
The popular application is rapidly conquering the world. Today, WhatsApp is used by hundreds of millions of people around the world: the monthly audience is 1 billion. It is also quite popular among Russian users.
Viber
An analogue of WhatsApp with similar functionality. However, it is more often used to make calls than to exchange messages.
Viber is already beginning to lose ground after the emergence of such popular means of communication or social media. networks like WhatsApp.
Instagram is in eighth place, but in the world it is constantly in the lead and is located in the top five. This is a network that is used by a large number of young people. It finally became possible to consider it social after Direct appeared on Instagram - chat with users.
Instagram is gradually starting to outpace Twitter. On Insta, everything is built on sharing photos, on Twitter, on short messages.
Twitter has become quite strong in the post-Soviet space, but is beginning to lose popularity to Instagram, which is still winning new users. The monthly audience is 7.7 million people.
On Twitter, the main feature is small notes about their lives that users share with each other. Naturally, the creators didn’t stop there and added a lot more. different possibilities: chat, the ability to post videos and photos, likes and reposts - making Twitter a full-fledged social network. network.
Facebook Messenger
Facebook Messenger also cannot be considered as a separate social network. This is an application that allows you to chat with your friends.
However, despite this, Facebook Messenger was in the top ten popular networks. The messenger has an arsenal of capabilities similar to Viber and WhatsApp.
How are things going abroad?
- Facebook Messenger
- QZONE
YouTube is also well known to Russian users, but in the world it is ranked second, and as one of the most popular social networks. networks. Billions of videos are watched daily on the site, and the number of accounts is 1.3 billion.
Well, perhaps in a few years YouTube will become just as popular here. The service at the moment mainly acts as a server for a huge number of videos, allowing users to create their own channels, comment on each other, and put “likes” or “dislikes”.
Tumblr appeared in Russia relatively recently and is just beginning to gain its popularity. While in the rest of the world it is already in the top ten. Its monthly audience is 555 million people.
This network is used mainly by young people. In it you can share various multimedia content. At the same time, the developers try to ensure its uniqueness.
The QQ and QZONE services are known primarily in Asia. This is a messenger and a social network, respectively. It is unlikely that if you go to them, you will find your friends there.
So, as you can see, in 2016 the lists of the most popular networks partially overlap. And even if they do not merge at all, it is clear that everywhere people follow the path of instant messengers and specialized applications in order to discard the unnecessary. Although traditional social networks still occupy the top.
A social network is a site through which you can communicate with other users of the resource. On such Internet platforms, you can publish and view information from other registered participants: music, photos and videos, documents, articles, and write comments.
The growing popularity of such portals encourages them to be used not only for personal purposes. Promotion and support of companies, sales of goods and services are the goals of strategies in social marketing (SMM). The key to success is choosing the right network among the many available. Otherwise, spending time and effort searching for the target audience will be useless. What social networks exist on the Internet, how do they differ from each other, and how have they earned popularity among their users? Let's take a closer look.
History of social networks
The first prototype of a communication service was described back in 1837 in a science fiction novel by Vladimir Odoevsky. The theory and principles of creation are set out in the works of mathematicians of the 1950-1960s. In 1954, the term itself appeared. Social networks became a reality with the widespread development of the Internet.
The first similarity was the resource Classmates.com in 1995, where you could find students from different educational institutions. The now more familiar look and functions appeared in the SixDegrees.com project in 1997. Registration, creating a personal profile, finding friends, communicating with them were innovative features for that time.
The now familiar social networks began to appear en masse in 2003. LinkedIn and Facebook are starting to work. Since 2006, Odnoklassniki and VKontakte have been created in Russia. Since then, the number of resources has been constantly increasing, new functions have appeared in them, which are not only convenient for users for entertainment and communication, but also for doing business.
What social networks are there on the Internet?
Based on functionality and opportunities for users, you can segment what types of social networks there are. To classify by content type, the following types of social networks can be distinguished:
Functionality
There are a lot of options for what to do on communication resources, but we can highlight the main ones. Services allow you to:
- Communicate with colleagues, friends, like-minded people and many people who are interesting according to one or another criteria. You can join interest groups, meet for specific purposes, and share personal information with all or selected visitors to the resource.
- Search – people (according to certain parameters, for example, educational institutions, places of work, city of residence), companies and goods that are offered for sale through communication sites.
- Share news - media outlets and news agencies have their own pages. Information about events can be added by all participants.
- Relaxing - this is facilitated by a lot of varied content posted on the portal for a fee or free of charge: films, games, music.
- Learn – educational programs, lessons, materials and advice from other people allow you to gain useful information in different areas of life. Learn to cook, master the grammatical subtleties of another language, attend master classes on making useful items with your own hands, hone your skills in using technology or computer programs- all this will be found in abundance.
- Store files and share them.
- Find a job or employee - professional networks are created for the exchange of experience, development business connections, searching for vacancies from employers.
- Share documents – working on one task has never been so easy! Borders, time differences, and other factors are leveled out shared access, the ability to comment and edit materials.
Reasons for popularity
The huge interest in communication sites that has been observed in recent years is understandable. Among the main reasons:
Regardless of what kind of social networks there are, users are increasingly aware of the hidden threats from their use. And we’re not just talking about dependence on a computer or other gadget, although the time spent is valuable. Much worse, and sometimes even more dangerous, is the fact that personal life circumstances become known to a wide circle of people. The intentions of the latter are not always honest. Here are just a few examples:
- Apartment thieves can find out when the owners of an apartment or house have been away for a long time by looking at vivid vacation photos.
- For the abduction of a child, information about the parents will play into the hands, which will convince the child to believe that the person really knows mom or dad.
- It is easier to choose a potential victim after making sure of the person’s financial viability using information from open sources.
- Groups are being created for teenagers to encourage suicide.
It is becoming a common practice when, before hiring, HR employees look through the pages of a potential candidate, wanting to learn more about him, his habits and social circle. Explicit photos, aggressive posts, support for extremism and other aspects can play a negative role both in employment and in your career.
Leaks of personal data, manipulation of audiences, hacking of accounts with subsequent use are becoming more and more common. And even the giants in this area are not immune from such troubles. All this makes you think about what to publish on resources and who to give access to view, teaches you to comply minimum requirements Be careful online.
Trends and prospects
A 2017 report from We Are Social and Hootsuite shows compelling user growth on social media. With a total population of about 7.5 billion people, over 3 billion are registered in one application or another. 1 million new registrations occur every day. Moreover, the number of visits to sites with mobile devices– almost 90% of visitors use smartphones and tablets rather than desktop computers.
At the same time, if a couple of years ago it was possible to quickly find out news and life events on communication platforms real people, then now the situation is radically changing. There are more and more advertisements, posts about cats, motivators and other general information. And this is no longer such a close, intimate and familiar circle of friends. The level of trust drops, which means it becomes more difficult to sell something.
More and more startups are emerging, which, although they will not displace Facebook from its leadership position in the near future, will attract part of the audience. Planning a marketing campaign requires more attention and with a preliminary analysis of the selected resource, product and target audience.
Forecasts are that active growth will slow down and the social media boom will subside. You shouldn’t give up your usual web portal in favor of only a page on Facebook, VK or another network. The familiar Internet and websites will remain on par with social networks.
What are the most popular social networks
Dozens of services work. Some of them are loved in several countries or even around the world, others unite citizens of one country and are not widely used outside its borders. An overview of what social networks there are and a list of popular world services is provided below.
The unconditional first place is ensured by over 2.2 billion accounts in the world. Facebook has been in operation since 2004, created by Mark Zuckerberg. Simple and free service communication that allows you to:
- Register your own page where you post photos and other materials.
- Find other users, add them as friends, find out their news.
- Share information from the network or from other participants, upload videos and photographs.
- Create groups (open or closed).
- Find out the news.
- Comment and rate publications.
Facebook Inc. (the owner of the service) is constantly expanding its capabilities. Hyperlocal advertising (within a certain radius from the advertiser), Snapchat (disappearing stories), GIF animation for commenting, saving interesting materials, messenger and other functions confidently hold the interest of users.
YouTube
Video hosting You Tube from Google is the most popular video network in the world. It is also considered a social network, as it allows users to register, communicate, and share their videos. Here you can find information for every taste, from entertainment to educational courses. Founded in February 2005 in the USA. At the beginning of 2018, there are over 1.5 billion active users, and the result of several million views of popular videos is quite achievable.
Main features:
- Post your videos for viewing.
- Different formats are supported: panoramas, HD, Full HD, MPEG-4 AVC and others.
- Edit videos from the browser using editor programs (add titles, audio tracks, images, transitions).
- Comment, rate other people's videos or comments.
- Create group chats.
- Maintain a video channel.
The company is trying to control the content of the resource, periodically deleting videos that violate copyright and are recognized as extremist. In some countries, the resource is blocked for publishing materials that are objectionable to the authorities.
Mobile messenger for more than 1.2 billion people. WhatsApp was created in 2009, and since 2014 it has been owned by Facebook Inc. It is considered a social network due to its functions:
- Correspondence between participants.
- Creation of groups, communication in group chat mode.
- Share videos, music and other content.
- Ability to assign statuses to an account.
These features make it possible to classify WhatsApp as a social network, with one feature - it works on the basis phone book. Needed for communication phone number interlocutor. Whether this limits it or, on the contrary, allows you to maintain privacy – there are different opinions. One of the advantages is that a large number of versions have been developed that support different operating systems, including Symbian (which is rare).
Application for different operating systems for publishing pictures and short videos (up to 60 seconds), viewing materials of other participants, with the ability to rate and comment. Since its launch in 2010, Instagram has reached more than 1.1 billion registered members. In 2012, it was acquired by Facebook Inc. Popular Features:
- Blogging.
- Photo processing - effects, frames, special shooting modes, collages.
- Creating your profile and publication feed.
- View friends, rate and comment on their posts.
- Cross-posting – simultaneous posting of material on several social networks.
- Search necessary information using hashtags (special marks).
Instagram is especially popular among young people under 25 years of age and is actively developing. This network is one of the most promising for business, product promotion, brand promotion and services.
The leader among Chinese services is WeChat, an application for micromessaging. Considering the ban in the country of world favorites Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, Chinese users communicate with their developments. WeChat is not just an application; it has much more options. Basic:
- Personal communication, video calls, voice messages.
- Group chats for up to 500 people.
- Blogs, reviews, testimonials, “Moments”.
- Pay bills and purchases.
- Dating (including geographic search).
- Photo editing, text translation.
- One account per different devices simultaneously.
And although there are a number of restrictions (for example, one publication per day), the application is relatively new (working since 2011), the number of accounts is approaching a billion. WeChat is being promoted outside of China (Russia, India and other countries).
Qzone
A Chinese social network with the following capabilities: blogging, watching videos, listening to music, communicating, making purchases. Basic options are free, additional options are available with a premium subscription. Since its foundation (2005), it has attracted 600 million participants. Available in English and Chinese.
Sina Weibo
A Chinese version of a microblog, basically similar to Facebook and Twitter. Since its inception (2009), it has attracted the attention of more than 500 million users. Development is hampered by the support of English and Chinese languages and government censorship of the country. It has a convenient tree structure for comments, an online shopping service, and a premium profile with advanced functionality. On the Internet you can communicate, meet new people, download and view photos, search for interesting information and follow the news.
Google+
Google's own development. The operating principle is based on the concept of circles. The user creates them himself, regulating who and what information will be available. Main features: sharing photos, videos, links, games, group chats, support for mobile devices, video conferencing. Launched in 2011, there are more than 135 million users. Profile linked to by email from Google and influences search results. The service is considered one of the most promising; the number of accounts is expected to grow steadily in the coming years.
Network for professionals. More than 500 million users from 200 countries communicate on its pages. The main emphasis is not on entertainment, humor, news and other content familiar to other services, but on a resume, portfolio, list of skills (with confirmation from real people), vacancies. Asking advice from colleagues, discussing professional issues, looking for a job or employees, getting recommendations are the tasks of LinkedIn. The project was launched in 2003 and purchased by Microsoft in 2016.
Started working in the USA in 2006. Features: blogging with short messages (maximum 280 characters). An interesting option is “Moments” (plots with development). You can learn about high-profile, popular news without subscribing to other users. People famous in various fields from show business to sports maintain their microblogs on Twitter. The total number of accounts exceeds 330 million.
What social networks are there in Russia?
In Russia, the popularity of online communication services does not lag behind global indicators. Only they have their favorites - Russian VKontakte and Odnoklassniki. Anyone who promotes their products or brand through SMM is required to know their leaders in this industry.
The rating of all social networks in Russia is estimated as part of the traffic that is created by this service on the Runet. The assessment is based on the results of 2018 studies of the largest Russian statistical data collection services on the Internet: Yandex.Metrica, SpyLog/Openstat, LiveInternet, Hotlog, [email protected].
These services lead in activity among Russians. Let's briefly look at two main national developments.
In contact with
Russian network created in 2006. Owned by Mail.Ru Group. Supports over 90 languages, over 460 million registered users. Most popular among Russian-speaking users - the leader of all social networks in Russia in terms of use. Possibilities:
- Creating your own page.
- Correspondence with other project participants.
- Sending pictures, audio and video recordings.
- Online cooperative games.
This resource is most often chosen for online stores and sales. This is facilitated by a wide range of opportunities and a large Russian-speaking audience.
Classmates
Another successful development by Mail.Ru Group. It ranks third in popularity in Russia with more than 330 million participants. The project is available in 14 languages and has been operating since 2006. Main features:
- Your own page for publishing information.
- Communication by messages or video calls.
- Search for people using different parameters.
- Payment for goods, money transfers.
- Additional paid options (invisibility, blacklist...).
The Odnoklassniki project works in both full and mobile versions, which is convenient and saves network traffic and time for loading the page.
List of social networks
A clear answer to the question “which social networks are better?” No. Each of them has a number of advantages and is popular in a certain environment. Country, age, range of interests influence preferences. We have decided on the main services, but the choice is much wider. Below is a list that includes the most promoted projects.
Social networks of the world:
- For communication: Facebook, VKontakte, MirTesen, Pinterest, Moy [email protected], Odnoklassniki, xbeee.com, Pikabu, ASKfm, Cloob, Instagram, Google+, Myspace, RetroShare, Vine.
- Thematic: Promise Bank, Diary, On the Wall, Habbo, Jeep-er Club, Auto Club AutoPCL, NumPlate, Last.fm, Olvet Community Network, MyAnimeList, Untappd, CHIF.SU, Wakoopa, Vsoyue, ktoprochto.ru, Nekto.me , Dravi.ru, Generations, Starichki.ru, Mom's page, MommyBuzz, BabyBlog, Badoo, Mamba, LovePlanet, Vichatter.net, Violetta, MegaMixGroup, Sociale by Vampir4ik, Ilovecinema.ru, Goodreads, Oplace, Zeenga.ru, We place , DRUZHNO.COM, Peers, Lemberg, Limpa, Badoo, LibertySpace, Locals.ru, Facerunet.ru, Krabitsa, Love Me Tender, Vpiski.Net, Neforu.ru, Budist.ru, Politix.ru, Politiko, In the Army, Classmates, Smeshariki, Moya Shkola.com, KSODIS, TOPodnoklassniki, Webkrug.ru, Car2gether, Tourout.ru, Marshruty.ru, Geoid, Naarende, IT Specialists, Habrahabr, Abyrvalg.NET, BookHook, Rybakiohotniki.ru, Foursquare, Schoolchildren .
- Professional: Doctor at work, My Circle, Professionals, E-xecutive, Mendeley, iVrach, LinkedIn, Viadeo, Academia.edu, Voiceland, Webby.ru, My Business Card, ResearchGate,.
- For blogs: Instagram, Fixfeel, Twitter, TipTopic.net, RuTvit, Toodoo, Blogosphere, LiveJournal, LiveJournal, Diary.ru.
- Asian: Tencent Qzone, Sina Weibo, QQ, Renren, Pengyou, WeChat, Douban.
Find like-minded people, meet love, get advice, learn something new and just chat - everything is possible on social networks. And what are the most popular ones you now know.
Social networks are a type of Internet resource with the ability to join different interest groups, discuss all sorts of links, videos, photos, etc. I don’t know any people who haven’t heard of at least a couple of networks from the list below.
How did you find out about this site?
- I am a registered user.
- Is it true? Are you doing this singles thing?
- I am a 32-year-old system administrator who works in the basement. Yes, I do this singles thing.
Facebook has an audience of 750 million users in 200 countries. The service was born in 2004 as a site for communication between Harvard students, and what follows is a well-known story. I highly recommend it to anyone who hasn’t seen Fincher’s film – it’s educational and 3 Oscars no matter how.
Forbes included the founder of the service, Mark Zuckerberg, in the list of the richest people in the world. There are many independent programmers working inside the site; the programs they created have brought the lion's share of success
LiveJournal is a blog platform that brings together a variety of people, be it age, social status, religious views, preferences, and so on.
In 1999, American programmer Brad Fitzpatrick registered the domain livejournal.com and created a giant virtual diary service. At first it was his personal blog site, then his friends and acquaintances began to unsubscribe there, and off we go. Fitzpatrick founded the company Danga Interactive, in 2005 the company was sold to the large corporation Six
Twitter is essentially a microblogging system where users can post short texts of up to 140 characters with via SMS, pagers and web interface. Twitter was created in 2006 in San Francisco by Evan Williams, Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass and Biz Stone. IT specialists worked on an R&D project with Odeo.
In October 2006, they opened their own company, Obvious, through which they managed Twitter and Odeo. There was nothing like this before, so immediately after entering the market, the number of users of the tweeting network began to grow very quickly. In April 2007, Twitter split from Obvious and became
Tom Anderson and Chris DeWulf met at XDrive Technologies, which they left to form their own company, Response Base Marketing. The main task was the creation of a universal space for online activities. Initially, the guys focused on the interests of the creative part of users - photography, programming, music, cinema.
As of June 2006, the resource boasted 48 million unique visitors and 27.4 billion page views. Even the Pentagon decided to take advantage of the popularity of MySpace: in the name of replenishing the ranks of the US armed forces social portal was created Official page American Marine Corps, equipped with a “Contract” button
Google+ is a social network of Google Inc. In 2010, there was information about the development of a new social Google network Me, but it turned out to be a duck. In the spring of 2011, information about the social network Google Circles was leaked, but when it launched in June Google work+, it became clear that Google Circles is its basis.
Circles divide the social circle into separate subgroups. The number of photos and videos is not limited by anything other than size; video duration is a maximum of 15 minutes with a resolution of 1080p. There are Video Meetings where users can set up video chat (maximum 10
Brothers Pavel and Nikolai Durov were inspired by Facebook and created Vkontakte.ru. Previously, Pavel created Durov.com and Spbgu.Ru (by the way, it is still one of the largest communities for students in St. Petersburg and Moscow).
Due to the similarity of the interfaces, there were many disputes about copyright, but for Vkontakte it was necessary to write your own code, look through the Ministry of Education reference books, university websites and do a hell of a lot of work. So to be honest
Albert Popkov was on the team that created the social network Passado.com. Since 2000, I have developed a project similar to Classmates with my own money. This loud and at times scandalous network has gained an audience of 1.5 million users in Russia in 7 months.
The British company i-CD Publishing, Popkov's former employer, accused him of using Passado's ideas and other terrible sins. They also said that Odnoklassniki is a project of the FSB, this is how they monitor people and collect dossiers in leather folders. Or whatever it is
Loading...
