Check the Internet resources that are social networks. Social network - what is it
Social network- an interactive multi-user website, the content of which is filled by the network members themselves. The site is an automated social environment that allows you to communicate with a group of users united by a common interest. These include thematic forums, especially industry ones, which have been actively developing in recent years.
Communication is done through the web service of internal mail or instant messaging.
Structure
And if LinkedIn was created to establish / maintain business contacts, then the owners of MySpace and Facebook relied primarily on satisfaction human need in self-expression. Indeed, in accordance with Maslow's pyramid, it is self-expression that is supreme need person, even ahead of recognition and communication. Social media have become a kind of Internet haven, where everyone can find a technical and social basis for creating their virtual "I". At the same time, each user got the opportunity not only to communicate and create, but also to share the fruits of their creativity with a multi-million audience of a particular social network.
Largest networks
IN different regions around the world, the popularity of different social networks varies. So, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn networks are more popular and widespread in North America;
Nexopia - in Canada;
Bebo - in the UK;
Facebook, Hi5, dol2day - in Germany;
Tagged.com ( English), XING and Skyrock - in different countries ah Europe;
Public Broadcasting Service, Orkut, Facebook and Hi5 in South and Central America (55% of Brazilian network users prefer Orkut);
Friendster, Multiply, Orkut, Xiaonei and Cyworld - in Asia (Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore).
Facebook (750,000,000 ), MySpace (255,000,000 ), Twitter (200,000,000 ), Vkontakte (150,000,000 ), Windows Live Spaces (120,000,000 ), Habbo Hotel (121,000,000 ), Friendster (90,000,000 ), Hi5 (80,000,000 ), Tagged.com (70,000,000 ).
English-speaking Russian-speaking
- My network
- Connect (there is a Russian-language interface)
- exSlife (there is a Russian-language interface)
- Vseti (there is a Russian-language interface)
- Hayland (there is a Russian and English interface)
- Kuku (there is a Russian-language interface)
- Draugiem.lv
- ONE.LV
Subspecies
Service social networks allow users to unite online around their common interests, hobbies or for various reasons. For example, some sites provide services that allow users to share personal information needed to find partners. Examples: LinkedIn , VKontakte .
Commercial social networks are focused on supporting business transactions and building people's trust in brands based on their opinions about the product, how to make it better, etc., thereby allowing consumers to participate in product promotion and increase their awareness.
Advertising
For advertisers, social media provides unique opportunities for direct contact with consumers. Every day, millions of users are talking about companies, their products and services, sharing their opinions and impressions. As a result, a single member of the network community can ruin (or vice versa) the reputation of a company with a multi-million dollar turnover.
The social media advertising market is growing steadily. In 2007, according to eMarketer, it reached $1.225 billion. When compiling the report, eMarketer experts took into account all types of advertising placed on social networks, including display, contextual and video advertising, as well as the costs of marketing projects in which marketers create profiles for their products and brands on social networks. In addition, for the first time, the cost of creating widgets and applications is included in the forecasts. According to a recent study by eMarketer, total revenues social networks from advertising in 2011 will reach 5.54 billion dollars According to eMarketer forecasts, by 2013 the size of the advertising market in social networks will double.
Currently, companies in sectors such as consumer goods, liquor manufacturers, automakers, and entertainment companies are showing the greatest interest in social networks. Consumer brands have not been aggressively advertising on the Internet until recently, but for 2009 many of them have budgeted for social media marketing.
The growth of advertising in social networks leads to pulling budgets. Popular advertising platforms such as search networks, major newspaper and magazine websites, and online media are now forced to cut advertising budgets or adapt to the realities of Web 2.0 by optimizing their sites for social media functionality.
dangers
Many people do not realize that the information they post on social networks can be found and used by anyone, including not necessarily with good intentions. Information about social media members can be found by their employers, parents, children, former or current wives or husbands, debt collectors, criminals, law enforcement, and so on.
For example, there is a case when a criminal was looking for outwardly similar women, killed them and sold their apartments.
There is a known case of manifestation of psychosomatic disorders on the basis of dependence on communication in social networks. In Belgrade, user Svetlana Pavlović ended up in a psychiatric clinic after her Facebook post failed to generate interest among her friends. The doctors of the clinic called this case "Svetlana's syndrome", explaining the patient's behavior as ordinary stress from the dissatisfaction of the individual's social needs in the modern world.
Some employers prohibit the use of social networks - not only to save money, but also to prevent information from leaking.
D. Boyd, based on survey materials in 16 US states, concluded that there are two main “fears” caused by social networks: sexual harassment and confidentiality of information. Content analysis of periodicals in Denmark allowed M. Larsen to compile a list of the most frequently mentioned problems in connection with social networks, which include: sexual violence and pedophilia, intimidation and harassment, threats and violence, the spread of nationalist ideas. K. Fuchs in the course of an online survey of German and Austrian students received the following list of risks: data confidentiality, spam, the possibility of losing personal information, creating a negative image, Internet addiction. S.V. Bondarenko, based on the material of the study of virtual network communities in the south of Russia, concluded that there are the following forms manifestations of deviant behavior: hacking, violation of secrecy, defamation, cyberterrorism, computer pedophilia. A survey conducted on the SU-HSE portal showed that, according to the respondents, networks are “dragging” and taking too much time, crowd out real communication, and provide “excessive communication and information”. “Privacy issues,” the report mentions, “are of less concern to social media users. Basically, these fears are associated with the easy availability of contact information for spammers, and not with the work of the secret services.
Applications
Social software is a wide range of software systems that allow users to interact and exchange data. This method of computer-mediated interaction has become popular with the advent of social sites such as MySpace, Facebook, Odnoklassniki.ru, Flickr and YouTube media sites, eBay commercial sites.
Many of these applications have General characteristics like: open APIs, service-oriented design, the ability to host data and media files remotely. Such applications are commonly referred to as Web 2.0 systems.
Within social software, two groups of software tools can be distinguished: communication and interactive.
Communication tools are used to record, store and present communication data, most often in text form, but increasingly in audio and video formats.
Interactive tools are used to support data-mediated (different media formats) interaction between individual users and their groups. Unlike communication tools, the emphasis is on supporting the connectivity of users and communication mechanisms between them. In contrast to communication tools, which are usually asynchronous, interactive tools are predominantly synchronous, allowing users to interact in real time (as in the case of Internet telephony, video chats, etc.) or almost synchronously (instant messaging services, text chats, etc.). . P.).
Can be called following examples software systems related to social software:
- Instant messaging systems (IM - Instant messaging) allow you to communicate with another user over the network in real time (in a relatively secure mode). The most popular of them include Skype, ICQ, Yahoo! Messenger, MSN Messenger, AOL Instant Messenger, Miranda IM. Business-oriented systems include IBM Lotus Sametime, Microsoft Messenger, and Jabber.
- Internet Relay Chat (IRC - Internet Relay Chat) allows several users to communicate simultaneously in real time.
- Internet forums have replaced electronic conferences (predating the WWW). A forum user can create a new "topic" that is available to others. Other users can view the topic and leave their comments in sequential recording mode.
- Web blogs, or blogs for short, can be thought of as personal online journals of individual users. The blog owner can post posts to his journal, while other users (readers) can leave comments on them.
- Wikis, or simply wikis, are essentially websites whose content can be edited by site visitors. The most famous example is Wikipedia.
IDC experts predict that the market for social media marketing and business applications will grow in the coming years. "Social media is getting more and more popular and there are applications for a variety of purposes that will drive the growth of this market," said Rachel Happe, research manager at IDC. “We expect that applications for various marketing companies and firms, as well as corporate applications, will soon become popular.”
In addition, the report states that the growth of the social networking application market will slow down only by 2011.
see also
Notes
| Social media | |
|---|---|
| general purpose | In contact with · With friends · Lovastochka · My [email protected] · Odnoklassniki.ru · Facebook · Google+ · mixi · myspace · netlog · One.lv · Orkut · Parta.by · Renren · Windows Live Spaces |
| Specialized | Promise bank · Diary.ru · Habbo Hotel · Last.fm · Livemocha · My Opera · Vine |
| For business acquaintances | In state · doctor at work · My Circle · Professionals.ru · e-xecutive.ru · LinkedIn · TIKR.ru |
| Blogs | [email protected] · Livejournal · Ameba · Diary.ru · LiveInternet.ru · LJ.Russia.org · Wordpress |
| microblogs | Twitter · Jaiku · Juick · subg · Tumblr |
| RSS aggregators (list) | FriendFeed |
| Acquaintance | Lady.Ru |
| For science | Mendeley · ResearchGate |
| In developing | Diaspora |
| Fixed (wired) | |
|---|---|
| Wireless |
| Communication | |
|---|---|
| Information | |
| Business |
A large number of visitors come from the search if the site is in the top ten and the further, the fewer users. This is the difficulty, because there are millions of sites. Real competition.
A brilliant idea to attract a large number of visitors to your site was the idea of a social network. The meaning of a social network is that people communicate in it and invite their friends to join. Many lack communication in reality or people are at a great distance from each other, popular social networks are based on this. During the development of social networks have become commonplace for us. We communicate on social networks every day.
For many users, social networks have become indispensable in terms of communication. Messaging with several people at once becomes a habitual state, without which a person plunges into loneliness and despondency. However, even being in the space of popular social networks does not make a person happy, since there is no real communication, depth and sincerity. Currently, many large companies are imposing a ban on popular social networks in Russia, such as Odnoklassniki.ru, VKontakte, Facebook and others.
In contact with- search for fellow students and classmates; the most visited resource in Russia and Ukraine. Created in 2006 by Pavel Durov (recently, registration is closed to everyone, you can become a member of the network only if one of your friends is already registered on the site, and he will send you an invitation to your mobile phone).
My [email protected] — a social network owned by the same company group as Odnoklassniki; fully monetized in 2010. Distinctive feature- the ability to download a special application and chat directly from your phone or computer (similar to an ICQ pager).
My Circle - social network for job search and professional personnel. The first social network in Runet, created in 2005 by a group of recent graduates of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Moscow State University and the New Economic School. Initially, the resource was conceived as a site for finding classmates, classmates, and was later redesigned. On March 27, 2007, the service was bought by Yandex; now it is one of the Yandex services and continues its development under his tutelage.
Companions– search for associates in spirit, the opportunity to express their opinion on the most acute and important topics.
Hello.ru - site about people and interests. Communication, blogs, communities, videos…
Web of Professional Dating (Webby)- provides an opportunity for its users to publish their presentation business card and establish business contacts.
TooDoo- as the authors of the site write, “this site is a social network of “sitefans”, designed to unite the Runet and allow everyone to exchange opinions with their friends about their favorite (or unloved) sites, find new interesting pages, recognize “by face” those who read the same sites, make new acquaintances with interesting people, for example, with the authors of your favorite sites.
Spaces.ru - Russian network for mobile phones.
In sight– the opportunity to meet new people, communicate with friends and acquaintances, create interest groups, as well as pages public places and cities. After passing the free registration, more than 17 services and other features are available.
Facebook- year of foundation - 2004. As of May 2011, more than 700 million accounts were registered on Facebook. The most popular social network in the world.
classmates- year of foundation - 1995. Number of participants - about 50 million. “When you are over thirty-five,” said Michael Schutzler, CEO of the project, “you look in the rearview mirror of your life, and one day a thought arises in your head:“ My God, how did I get here? And how is Harry? I haven't spoken to him for 25 years." The network, whose name is translated into Russian as Odnoklassniki, created in the city of Renton, USA, is called upon to solve the problem of "looking in the rear-view mirror". Today, Classmates.com is one of the largest social networks in the world, bringing together people who want to find and keep in touch with those with whom they studied, worked or served in the military. It offers its members the opportunity to upload photos, biographies, participate in news discussions in their community feeds. Classmates.com is considered the first social network on the Internet.
myspace- year of foundation - 2003. "An online community for communicating with friends of your friends" - this is how the developers define the purpose of this social network. Network members can create their own communities of interest, blog, post photos, music and video materials. In January 2008, a beta version in Russian was launched, but already in August 2009, the final closure of the Russian division was announced. Russian MySpace CEO Alexander Turkot explained the closure by Rupert Murdoch's categorical unwillingness to develop the network in Russia. However, the Russian-language interface and profiles of Russian users are preserved. After 2009, it loses its popularity (it dropped from 5th place in the world to 72nd in 2011, the number of network members during this time decreased from 80 to 30 million). In April 2011, for the first time, losses were announced in the network.
LinkedIn- year of foundation - 2003. A growing network includes St. 100 million professionals from 150 industries. Users have the tools to create their own professional portfolio, search for partners and clients, expand the circle of professional communication.
Friendster- year of foundation - 2002. One of the oldest online social networks providing the search for those "who are interested in you" and building a social network. IN last years losing popularity. The number of users - 8.2 million (June 2010) from around the world.
- Tags:
With the spread of the Internet, there are more and more questions from various users that affect social networks - what is it and how do they differ from other sites. The most correct answer to them would be to define such networks as platforms for building between people who share certain interests, activities, or have real connections outside the Internet. As a rule, the functionality of a social network is to provide each user with his personal profile, the ability to create links with other accounts, as well as a number of additional services.
Thus, social networks on the Internet are sites that provide services that allow people to create a public profile, add a list of users with whom they can share various information and keep in touch. Most of these resources have a means of user interaction through, for example, instant messaging.
Social networks - what is it today?
These sites are now diversified and include new information and communication tools such as photo/video sharing and blogging. In addition, on the basis of many social networks there are so-called Internet communities that unite people according to narrower interests and preferences. Regardless of the original purpose, social networks allow users to exchange ideas, photos, messages, activities, events, communicate with different people and so on.
What is their main difference?
Basically, these services unite people according to various classifying criteria - former schools, Universities, places of work, hobbies and so on. Each country has the most popular social network, the formations in which (groups, publics, communities) are unique in accordance with local traditions. In addition, some services have spread around the world and have become popular among users in most countries (including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.).
History of social networks
To fully answer the question "social networks - what is it?", you need to familiarize yourself with the history of their appearance. Initially, to ensure communication between network users, such services as Usenet, ARPANET, mailing lists and bulletin boards were introduced. Many prototype social networking features have been present in online services such as America Online, Prodigy, CompuServe, ChatNet, and a few others.
More modern-day services began to appear on the World Wide Web as generic online communities like Theglobe.com (in 1995), Geocities (1994), and Tripod.com (1995). Many of these early resources focused on bringing people together and communicating through chats, and encouraged users to share information and ideas through personal pages, providing easy-to-use publishing tools and free or low-cost hosting. Subsequently, social networks appeared on the Internet, taking a different approach, connecting people through email and messaging. The first such service in the world was Classmates.com.
Most up-to-date services
In the late 1990s, user profiles became the centerpiece of social media, allowing users to build "friend" lists and search for other users with similar interests. New operating principles for these services were developed in the late 1990s, and sites began to try to promote a better user experience. This new generation of social media flourished with the advent of SixDegrees.com in 1997, followed by Makeoutclub (2000) and Friendster (2002), and soon became part of the Internet mainstream. Friendster was followed by MySpace and LinkedIn (a social network for workers). Facebook was launched in 2004. It soon became the largest social network in the world.
What services are the most popular today?
Facebook is a social networking site headquartered in the US, in Menlo Park, California. As mentioned above, this website was launched in 2004 along with its college dorm roommates. The founders initially limited the site's visitors to only Harvard students, but later made it available to many other students. Since 2006, this project has become available to everyone who has reached the age of 13.
After registering on the site, users can create a profile, add other users as friends, exchange messages, make status updates, add photos, share videos, and receive notifications from friends. In addition, users can join interest groups and categorize their friends in lists, such as "People from work" or "Close friends". Facebook has over 1.44 billion active users as of March 2015.
Blogs and business website
Twitter is an online service that allows users to send and read short 140-character messages called tweets. Registered users can read and write tweets, unregistered users can only read. Users access Twitter through a website interface, SMS, or mobile device app. Office of Twitter Inc. based in San Francisco and has over 25 branches worldwide. In May 2015, Twitter had over 500 million users, of which over 302 million are active.
LinkedIn is a business-oriented service. In other words, employees and employers. Founded in December 2002 and launched on May 5, 2003, it is mainly used for professional communication. In 2006, LinkedIn was expanded to 20 million members. As of June 2013, LinkedIn reported over 259 million users in over 200 countries.
The most famous social networks in Russia
VK (originally VKontakte) is Russia's largest social network. It is available in several languages, but is especially popular among Russian-speaking users, in particular, in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Like other similar social and entertainment networks, VKontakte allows users to send messages to each other publicly or privately, create groups, pages and events, share images, audio and video, and play browser-based games. As of November 2014, the service had 280 million accounts.
"Odnoklassniki" (or OK.ru) is a search site former classmates and old friends. It is popular in Russia and other former Soviet republics. The site currently claims to have over 200 million registered users and 45 million daily unique visitors. This resource has been around for eight years.
Livejournal
Forecast and development
This article gave a detailed answer to the following question: "Social networks - what is it?". Currently, there are new and new resources similar to those listed above, but every year it is becoming more and more difficult for them to withstand competition and become leaders.
Hello dear readers and friends!
Please answer the question:
What is it - a community of people who have gathered there according to their interests in order to communicate with each other, exchange information and their knowledge, or something else?
Or is it a huge network of cobwebs that lure people into its webs different ways, and then makes them there to forget about everything in the world.
Time flies unnoticed and a person, replacing the lack of real communication with virtual, understands that everything ... he was sucked in !!!
How does it happen? Why do people begin to replace their real life with communication on the Internet? Or are they just afraid to be misunderstood and ridiculed? And on the Internet, an unfamiliar interlocutor will listen, advise, and then simply disappear forever.
Now we will deal with you in this matter. But first, let's ask our favorite encyclopedia, Wikipedia, what it thinks of the social network.
What is a social network?
Social network (from the English social networking service) is a platform, online service or website designed to build, reflect and organize social relationships, visualization of which are social graphs.
These are websites that have been developed with the aim of introducing and connecting people with common interests. .
What does this give us? This gives us the opportunity to communicate together on various topics, as well as discuss photos and videos that we publish on our page.
But, soon Russia quickly made up for lost time. And now we have analogues of Western social services: VKontakte, Odnoklassniki.ru, My World.mail.ru, Among friends, Privet.ru and many others.
All users have the opportunity to communicate with each other, share photos, music, opinions.
You can create groups, communities, public pages together, where specific information will be exchanged.
You can also play various online games together.
The following social networks are now widespread and popular in the world: Facebook, Twitter, Google+.
Facebook, Myspace, VKontakte, Google+, Linked, Badoo, Tagbrand, Livejournal, Tumblr - microblogging service, Twitter - microblogging service, Friendster, Svoi Krug, Twoo, Viadeo… Odnoklassniki, Moi Mir.mail.ru, AlterGeo (geosocial network), Hydepark, Among friends, Privet.ru, My Circle…
For many people, the Internet is a means of self-expression. The need of a person to declare himself to the world contributes to the fact that social networks have become so closely integrated into our real life.
Social networks are very important for our society, because even world political leaders can no longer ignore the opinions of social network participants. They have to take into account the opinions of people who are vigorously discussing political issues taking place in the world. For example, before political elections.
Often, many statesmen are themselves members of various social networks.
For example, the President of Russia is a user of popular social networks in Russia, and the President of the United States uses the Facebook network.
As you know, a social network today is also a kind of tool for promoting a business on the Internet. To promote our site, or any information product, we actively use the help of social network users.
These are natural links, as users share links of their own free will, not for money. As they say, for simple interest. This is the strength of their naturalness and peculiar weight in search engines. That is, it is obvious that this is a very promising direction for promotion - activities in social networks. Although quite difficult.
Among other things, we also make new acquaintances to promote our business and ideas.
But ... here you have to be especially careful.
After all, communicating with a person virtually, we can simply be deceived by the expectations of what actually has a completely different side. It is human nature to embellish reality a little, their external data and character.
Just how can I not remember a movie I recently watched a little humorous.
A certain girl periodically met on social networks to gain personal happiness. And who doesn't want it? Everybody wants!
But she was always wrong, she was just unlucky, and there were only deceivers of a man who positioned themselves as a loved one. successful businessman, exhibited other people's photos of such pretty MACHOs on prestigious foreign cars. The girl believed, but in fact then she got a completely different result!
So, please, be vigilant and do not fall in love with people in advance, who may have someone else's face, someone else's thoughts downloaded from the Internet, and a different life.
Just chat on SKYPE, watch a person and then only draw conclusions!
If this is YOUR FATE, then you can’t get away from it anywhere.
That's all. We have considered a complex and at the same time simple question:
best regards, author Larisa Mazurova.
We released new book"Social media content marketing: How to get into the head of subscribers and make them fall in love with your brand."
Social network - a site with which you can communicate with other users of the resource. On such Internet sites, you can publish and view information from other registered participants: music, photos and videos, documents, articles, 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, services are the goals of strategies in social marketing (SMM). The key to success is choosing the right network among the many available. Otherwise, the time spent on searching 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 consider in more detail.
History of social networks
The first prototype of a service for communication was described back in 1837 in a science fiction novel by Vladimir Odoevsky. The theory and principles of creation are set forth in the works of mathematicians of the 1950-1960s. In 1954, the term itself appears. The real embodiment of social networks received with the widespread development of the Internet.
The first similarity was the Classmates.com resource in 1995, where you could find pupils and students from different educational institutions. A more familiar look and function now appeared in the SixDegrees.com project in 1997. Registration, creating a personal profile, finding friends, chatting with them were innovative opportunities for that time.
Now familiar social networks began to appear en masse since 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, they have new features that are not only convenient for users for entertainment and communication, but also for doing business.
What are social networks on the Internet
By functionality and opportunities for users, you can segment what social networks are. To classify by type of content, the following types of social networks can be distinguished:
Functionality
There are a lot of options for what to do on the resources for communication, but you can highlight the main ones. Services allow:
- Communicate - with colleagues, friends, like-minded people and a lot of people who are interesting for one reason or another. You can join interest groups, get acquainted for certain purposes, share personal information with all or selected visitors of the resource.
- Search - people (by 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 - the media, news agencies have their own pages. Event information can be added by all participants.
- Rest - this is facilitated by the mass of various content, paid or free of charge posted on the portal: movies, games, music.
- Learn - educational programs, lessons, materials and advice from other people provide useful information in various areas of life. Learn to cook, master the grammatical subtleties of another language, attend DIY workshops useful items, hone your skills in technology or computer programs - all this is found in abundance.
- Store files, share them.
- Find a job or an employee - professional networks are created for the exchange of experience, development business connections, search for vacancies from employers.
- Organize document sharing - work on one task has never been so easy! Borders, time difference, other factors are leveled public access, the ability to comment and edit materials.
Reasons for popularity
The huge interest in sites for communication, which has been observed in recent years, is quite understandable. Among the main reasons:
Regardless of what social networks are, users are increasingly aware of the hidden threats from their use. And it's not just 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 range of people. The intentions of the latter are not always honest. Here are just a few examples:
- Thieves can tell the time prolonged absence owners of an apartment or house bright photo from vacation.
- For the abduction of a child, information about the parents will play into the hands, which will convince the kid to believe that the person really knows mom or dad.
- Choose potential victim easier, making sure of the material solvency of a person according to information from open sources.
- Groups are being created for teenagers who are pushing for suicide.
Becomes frequent practice when, before hiring, HR employees browse the pages of a potential candidate, wanting to learn more about him, his habits and social circle. Candid photos, aggressive posts, support for extremism and other moments can play a negative role both in employment and in a career.
Leaks of personal data, manipulation of the audience, hacking of accounts with subsequent use are becoming more common. And even the giants in this field are not immune from such troubles. All this makes you think about what to publish on resources and to whom to give access to viewing, teaches you to comply with the minimum requirements for caution on the network.
Trends and prospects
A 2017 report from We Are Social and Hootsuite shows strong growth in social media usage. With a total population of about 7.5 billion people, more than 3 billion are registered in various applications. 1 million new registrations occur daily. Moreover, the number of visits to sites with mobile devices– almost 90% of visitors use smartphones and tablets, not desktop computers.
At the same time, if a couple of years ago it was possible to quickly find out news and events from the lives of real people on communication platforms, now the situation is changing radically. There are more and more advertisements, posts about "seals", motivators and other general information. And this is no longer such a close, close and familiar circle of friends. The level of trust falls, which means it becomes more difficult to sell something.
There are new and new startups that, although they will not move Facebook from a leadership position in the near future, will attract part of the audience. Planning a marketing campaign is required more carefully and with a preliminary analysis of the selected resource, product and target audience.
Forecasts boil down to the fact that active growth will slow down and the social media boom will subside. You should not abandon the usual web portal in favor of only a page on Facebook, VK or another network. The usual Internet and sites will remain on a par with social networks.
What are the most popular social networks
There are dozens of services. Some of them are loved in several countries or even around the world, others unite citizens of one country and have not received widespread beyond. An overview of what social networks are and a list of popular world services is offered below.
The unconditional first place is provided by over 2.2 billion accounts in the world. Facebook has been operating since 2004, founded by Mark Zuckerberg. A simple and free communication service that allows you to:
- Register your own page where photos and other materials are posted.
- 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).
- Learn the news.
- Comment and rate posts.
Facebook Inc. (service owner) is constantly expanding the possibilities. Hyper-local ads (within a certain radius from the advertiser), Snapchat (disappearing stories), GIF animation for commenting, saving interesting materials, messenger and other features confidently keep users interested.
YouTube
You Tube video hosting 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, share their videos. Here you can find information for every taste from entertainment to training courses. Founded in February 2005 in the USA. At the beginning of 2018, it has over 1.5 billion active users, and the result of several million views of popular videos is quite achievable.
Key features:
- Submit your videos for viewing.
- be maintained different formats: panoramas, HD, Full HD, MPEG-4 AVC and others.
- Edit video from the browser using editor programs (add titles, audio tracks, images, transitions).
- Comment, rate other people's videos or comments.
- Create group chats.
- Run a video channel.
The company is trying to control the content of the resource by periodically removing videos that violate copyright and are recognized as extremist. In some countries, the resource is blocked for publishing materials objectionable to the authorities.
Mobile messenger for over 1.2 billion people. Created by WhatsApp in 2009, since 2014 - owned by Facebook Inc. It is considered a social network in terms of its functions:
- Correspondence between participants.
- Creation of groups, communication in group chat mode.
- Sharing video, music and other content.
- Ability to assign statuses to an account.
These features allow WhatsApp to be classified as a social network, with one feature - it works based on the phone book. For communication, you need the phone number of the interlocutor. Limits it, or vice versa, 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).
An application for different operating systems for posting pictures and short videos (up to 60 seconds), viewing other participants' materials, with the ability to rate and comment. Since its launch in 2010, Instagram has enjoyed over 1.1 billion registered members. Acquired by Facebook Inc in 2012. Popular features:
- Blogging.
- Photo processing - effects, frames, special shooting modes, collages.
- Create your own profile and feed of publications.
- View friends, rate and comment on their publications.
- Cross-posting is the simultaneous posting of material in several social networks.
- Search necessary information by hashtags (special marks).
Instagram is especially popular among young people under the age of 25 and is actively developing. This network is one of the most promising for business, product promotion, brand and service promotion.
The leader among Chinese services is WeChat, a micromessaging application. Given 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 many more options. Main:
- Personal communication, video calls, voice messages.
- Group chats up to 500 people.
- Blogs, reviews, testimonials, “Moments”.
- Paying bills and shopping.
- Acquaintances (including with geographical search).
- Photo editing, text translations.
- 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 (it has been working since 2011), the number of accounts is approaching a billion. WeChat is being promoted outside of China (Russia, India and other countries).
Qzone
Chinese social network with features: blogging, watching videos, listening to music, chatting, 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
Chinese version of microblogging, basically similar to Facebook and Twitter. Since its inception (2009) has attracted the attention of more than 500 million users. Development is constrained by the support of English and Chinese, the country's state censorship. It has a convenient tree-like structure of comments, an online shopping service, a premium profile with advanced functionality. On the network, you can chat, get to know each other, upload and view photos, search for interesting information and follow the news.
Google+
Own development by Google. The principle of operation is based on the concept of circles. The user creates them himself, regulating to whom and what information will be available. Key features: sharing photos, videos, links, games, group chats, support for mobile devices, video conferencing. Launched in 2011, more than 135 million users. Profile linked to email from Google and affects search results. The service is considered one of the most promising, it is expected that in the coming years the number of accounts will grow steadily.
Network for professionals. More than 500 million users from 200 countries communicate on its pages. The main focus is not on entertainment, humor, news and other content familiar to other services, but resumes, portfolios, a list of skills (with confirmation from real people), vacancies. Asking colleagues for advice, discussing professional issues, looking for a job or employees, getting recommendations are the tasks of LinkedIn. The project was launched in 2003 and bought out by Microsoft in 2016.
Started working in the USA in 2006. Features: Blogging with short posts (max 280 characters). An interesting option is “Moments” (plots with development). You can learn about resonant, popular news without subscribing to other users. Their microblogs on Twitter are people known in various fields from show business to sports. The total number of accounts exceeds 330 million.
What social networks are there in Russia
In Russia, the popularity of services for online communication does not lag behind world indicators. Only there are favorites - Russian Vkontakte and Odnoklassniki. Knowing your leaders in this industry is a must for anyone who promotes their products, brand through SMM.
The rating of all social networks in Russia is estimated as part of the traffic that this service creates in Runet. The assessment is based on the results of 2018 studies of the largest Russian services collection of statistical data on the network: Yandex.Metrika, SpyLog/Openstat, LiveInternet, Hotlog, Рейтинг@Mail.ru.
These services are leading in terms of activity of Russians. Let us briefly dwell on two main national developments.
In contact with
Russian network, created in 2006. Belongs to Mail.Ru Group. Supports over 90 languages, over 460 million registered users. The most popular among Russian-speaking users is the leader of all social networks in Russia in terms of use. Possibilities:
- Creating your page.
- Correspondence with other project participants.
- Sending pictures, audio and video recordings.
- Joint online games.
It is this resource that 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 of Mail.Ru Group. It ranks third in popularity in Russia with more than 330 million members. The project is available in 14 languages and has been operating since 2006. Key features:
- Own page for publishing information.
- Chat with messages or video calls.
- Search for people by different parameters.
- Payment for goods, money transfers.
- Additional paid options (invisibility, blacklist ...).
The Odnoklassniki project works both in full and in mobile version, which is convenient, saves network traffic and page loading time.
List of social networks
An unequivocal 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, circle of interests pay attention to preferences. We have decided on the main services, but the choice is much wider. Below is a list that includes the most hyped 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: Bank of Promises, Diary, On the Wall, Habbo, Jeep-er Club, AutoPCL Auto Club, NumPlate, Last.fm, Olvet Community Network, MyAnimeList, Untappd, CHIF.SU, Wakoopa, Vsoyuz, ktoprochto.ru, Nekto.me , Drawi.ru, Generations, Oldies.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, My School.com, XODIS, TOPclassmates, Webkrug.ru, Car2gether, Tourout.ru, Marshruty.ru, Geoid, Naarende, IT-Specialists, Habrakhabr, Abyrvalg.NET, BookHook, Rybakiohotniki.ru, Foursquare, Schoolboys .
- 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, RuTwit, Toodoo, Blogosphere, LiveJournal, LiveJournal, Diary.ru.
- Asian: Tencent Qzone, Sina Weibo, QQ, Renren, Pengyou, WeChat, Douban.
Find like-minded people, meet love, consult, learn something new and just chat - everything is possible in social networks. And what are the most popular ones you now know.
