What social networks exist? Social Network Lists

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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 obtain 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 to exchange experiences, develop business connections, and search for vacancies from employers.
• Share documents – working on one task has never been so easy! Borders, time differences, and other factors are offset by general 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, and teaches you to observe the minimum requirements of caution on the Internet.

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 from mobile devices is growing - almost 90% of visitors use smartphones and tablets, rather than desktop computers.

At the same time, if a couple of years ago on communication platforms it was possible to quickly find out news and events from the lives of real people, 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 dislodge Facebook from its leadership position in the near future, will attract part of the audience. Planning a marketing campaign requires more care and 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.

Facebook

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. A simple and free communication service 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 retain 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.
• Various 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 objectionable to the authorities.

whatsapp

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.
• Possibility of assigning statuses for an account.

These features make it possible to classify WhatsApp as a social network, with one feature - it works based on the phone book. To communicate, you need the phone number of the 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).

Instagram

An application for different operating systems for publishing pictures and short videos (up to 60 seconds), viewing materials from 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 for the 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.

WeChat

The leader among Chinese services is WeChat, a micromessaging application. 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 on different devices at the same time.

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 founding (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. The profile is associated with an email from Google and affects search results. The service is considered one of the most promising; the number of accounts is expected to grow steadily in the coming years.

LinkedIn

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 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 purchased by Microsoft in 2016.

Twitter

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 a variety of 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. It is imperative for anyone who promotes their products or brand through SMM 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.

Continuing the topic of social networks that I raised the other day (by the way, if you haven’t read the post about Russian social networks), I offer you a translation of the article “33 places to hang out in the era of social networks,” published on the rev2.org blog. The article is an impressive list of foreign social networks and gives a good insight into this rapidly growing market. Over the past two years, the popularity of social networks has increased significantly. Everyone can find a network to their liking; there are networks for dogs, parents, book lovers and shopaholics. In my opinion, it is very useful and interesting to spend time on social networks. It is because of the growing interest in social media that I created this list. I think that it will be useful for those who, despite existing profiles on MySpace or Bebo, are ready to look for something new and interesting.

Please note that I did not include in the list services focused on social bookmarking, as well as systems “with a hint” of social networks (YouTube or Flickr). I have also divided the list into two categories - general and special. The list covers only those services that are available to a wide range of users (no closed beta by invitation).

MySpace is the largest social network in the world. It conquered the United States with tremendous speed; MySpace now has about 80 million users. In 2005, it was bought by Newscorp for $580 million. MySpace continues to develop rapidly and at the moment it is she who determines the development of social networks.

Bebo - unlike the Americanized MySpace, Bebo is designed for other English-speaking countries such as England, Australia and New Zealand. Bebo is very similar in functionality to MySpace. Initially, Bebo was created in order to communicate between friends, but subsequently the network has grown and currently has about 40 million users.
Recommended for: teenagers, young adults

Tagworld – founded in the fall of 2005. Direct competitor to MySpace. It stands out for its excellent implementation of Web 2.0 (tagging, AJAX). Tagworld also has a search engine for music and an IM client with video chat capabilities.
Recommended for: teenagers, young adults

Orkut is a product created by a Google programmer in his free time (You know, every Google programmer has the right to spend 20% of his working time on his own projects). Orkut began its development in the USA, but subsequently became widespread in Brazil (about 65% of users).
Recommended for: Brazilian youth.

AIM pages – The youngest social network among the most popular. This is AOL's attempt to supplant MySpace in the social networking market. It was believed that AIM Pages would be a real breakthrough, but it still has a long way to go.
Recommended for: teenagers, young adults

Hi5 has about 40 million users. You have to pay to participate in this social network. One of the distinctive features of the system is that you can download music from iTunes for money and add it to your profile. With a free account you can upload a whole gigabyte of photos. Hi5 has profiles for Kelly Clarkson, Jessica Simpson, and Tyra Banks.
Recommended for: teenagers, young adults

Panjea is a social network with an economy founded this year. Offers several ways to get paid for your creative work. There is a unique points system.
Recommended for: teenagers, young adults

Cyworld appeared in Korea and grew to phenomenal proportions. The daily income of this network is about $300,000. Cyworld is now gradually expanding to the US. The network has its own currency (acorns), and each user also has his own “minihompy” (profile). Users can decorate their "minihompy" and keep in touch with each other.
Recommended for: teenagers, young adults, Koreans

Tagged – intended mainly for teenagers. The main idea is to be tagged, create tagging teams and earn points in order to become the coolest tagging team. Tagging is slowly gaining popularity among teenagers in the United States, but is always secondary compared to MySpace.
Recommended for: teenagers

Popist is very similar to MySpace, both in interface and focus. Offers users a large number of open functions, such as the ability to integrate with other social networks.
Recommended for: teenagers

Friendster, one of the first networks launched as a “social experiment”, just recently acquired a “social networking” patent. The network has grown very quickly, but today it has completely fallen and currently occupies less than 1% of the social networking market.
Recommended for: teenagers

Tribe - NBC recently acquired this network. The main task of Tribe is not so much in dating and communication, but in uniting users’ own social networks. Provides the opportunity to create so-called “clans”, and is also very well localized due to these same clans.
Recommended for: teenagers

Facebook- a startup from Silicon Valley. Widely used among colleges and universities in most English-speaking countries. It is the second most popular network after MySpace in the United States. This network is not yet available in many countries, but is developing and growing steadily.

ConnectU is very similar to Facebook. Also designed for college and university students. ConnectU, unlike Facebook, covers a much smaller number of colleges and universities around the world.
Recommended for: College and university students

Yahoo! 360 – launched in early 2005, a Yahoo product that provides the ability to combine blogs and photo albums. Only for those over 18 years old - this significantly reduces the list of potential users.
Recommended for: adults

PeopleAggregator is Marc Canter's attempt to carve out his niche in the social media space. Based on open standards and functionality. One of the distinctive features is that this is just a demo version of the software, which can be purchased later.
Recommended for: adults

MommyBuzz – Launched just a couple of months ago, MommyBuzz is designed to allow moms to connect online, share and exchange thoughts and ideas with other moms. A wonderful place for such a target group.
Recommended: Moms

MuslimSpace - Created by a former computer engineering student at the American University of Sharjah, MuslimSpace lives up to its name - MySpace for Muslims. Today the site has about 15,000 users, and its goal is to be a cleaner and more secure site than MySpace and, of course, only for Muslims.
Recommended: Muslims

Stardoll – Would you like to dress up celebrities as paper dolls? Originally called Paperdoll Heaven, Stardoll does just that. With a strong social network at its core and almost a million users, Stardoll is gaining mega popularity in the world of children and teenagers in much the same way as Neopets did a few years ago.
Recommended for: children/teenagers

Imbee – There are so many sites for teenagers, but what about children? Imbee's goal is to provide a safe and secure social network for children. So now if your big brother is bragging about his MySpace profile and teasing that you can't get one, go to Imbee!
Recommended for: children

Dogster is a place where dogs (and their owners) can meet and socialize. On Dogster, each dog has its own web page. The subtitle reads: post dog photos, tell dog stories, make new dog friends!
Recommended for: dogs and their owners

Catster is practically the twin brother of the Dogster site, developed by the same people, Catster is Dogster for cats. Post photos of cats, tell cat stories, make new friends (cats)! Does anything else need to be explained?
Recommended for: cats and their owners

Fuzzster – Being somewhat of a combination of Dogster and Catster, Fuzzster is the place for your cats, dogs and other furry pets. Launched in early 2004, it has grown to become a fairly large community of animal lovers.
Recommended for: furry animals and their owners

BookCrossing – In the real world, bookcrossing works like this: someone leaves a book in a public place for others to pick up and read, and then do the same. The goal of the BookCrossing site is to launch the same process in the virtual world.
Recommended: Book lovers

Boompa is a site for car enthusiasts, and there are certainly a lot of them on the Internet. The goal of the network is to become your online garage. Car enthusiasts can show off their cars here, find recommendations for improving them, meet other car enthusiasts, view videos and photos, and much more.
Recommended for: car enthusiasts

Spout is a database of over 250,000 movie titles, Spout is a social network for movie fans. Here you can find reviews and recommendations, meet other film fans. Spout is a good place to visit before you rent a movie.
Recommended: Film buffs

MOG is a startup from Silicon Valley, MOG's goal is to unite music lovers with the same interests. A very interesting way to meet new people, and here you can discover new musical trends that you didn’t know about before.
Recommended: for music lovers

Gusto. There are sites about cars, films, music, books, animals, but what about travel? Gusto is precisely a place that unites travelers based on their lifestyle (expressed in preferences). You can also find tons of travel information, recommendations, and reviews here.

Yub.com – combines a social network and shopping. Yub.com's goal is to provide a smart online shopping experience. A "cash back" system is used, where if one user helps another or vice versa, both users have the opportunity to receive CashBack. A fun way to shop.
Recommended for: lovers of (online) shopping

Yelp (from the makers of PayPal) - This site is much like Yub, designed to help shoppers make decisions by showing them reviews from other users. However, unlike Yub, Yelp is more focused on commercial activities and services rather than consumer-facing products. Currently only available in the US.
Recommended for: Any US resident (especially in big cities)

– according to surveys, the most popular business network, the purpose of LinkedIn is to unite colleagues and business partners and help find new ones. With nearly 5 million users, LinkedIn remains popular among business audiences.
Recommended for: mercenaries and businessmen

biddingBuddies – Often on auction sites like eBay you have to deal with a lot of people. BiddingBuddies can help you with this. This is the only social network exclusively for eBay users. Now, if you are participating in an auction, why not make friends with your opponents.
Recommended for: eBay users (buyers and sellers)

Faqqly – There are so many things you'd like to know about your friends, so why not ask them through Faqqly? Faqqly creates an FAQ (frequently asked questions) page for each user and allows friends to ask each other anything.
Recommended for: curious people – teenagers, young people

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.

Tumblr– a social network for those who like to blog, as well as read and comment on the blogs of other users. Created in 2007, this social network today has about 220 million users.

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 is 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- the 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 that did not become a hit in the USA and Europe, but is very popular among residents of Latin America, India and a number of other countries. The project is currently closed and is being relocated to the Hello social network platform.

With the spread of the Internet, various users increasingly ask questions regarding social networks - what they are and how 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 consists of providing each user with a personal profile, the ability to create connections with other accounts, as well as a number of additional services.

Thus, online social networks 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 maintain communication. Most of these resources have means for user interaction through, for example, instant messaging.

Social networks - what is it today?

These days, these sites are diverse 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 online communities that unite people according to narrower interests and preferences. Regardless of their original purpose, social networks allow users to exchange ideas, photos, messages, activities, events, communicate on interests with various people, and so on.

What is their main difference?

Basically, these services unite people according to various classification 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 throughout 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?”, it is necessary to familiarize yourself with the history of their appearance. Initially, services such as Usenet, ARPANET, mailing lists and bulletin boards were introduced to ensure communication between network users. Many prototypes of social networking features were present in online services such as America Online, Prodigy, CompuServe, ChatNet, and several others.

More similar services began to appear on the World Wide Web in the form of generalized online communities like Theglobe.com (in 1995), Geocities (1994), and Tripod.com (1995). Many of these early resources focused on bringing people together and connecting them through chat rooms, and encouraged users to share information and ideas through personal pages, providing easy-to-use publishing tools and free or low-cost hosting. Subsequently, online social networks emerged that took a different approach, connecting people through email and messaging. The first such service in the world was Classmates.com.

The most modern services

In the late 1990s, user profiles became a central element of social networks, allowing users to create lists of “friends” 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 better features for users. This new generation of social networks began to flourish 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 (an employee social network). Facebook was launched in 2004. It soon became the largest social network in the world.

What services are most popular today?

Facebook is a social networking site headquartered in the United States in Menlo Park, California. As stated above, this website was started in 2004 with his college roommates. The founders initially limited visitors to the resource to Harvard students only, but later made it available to many other students. Since 2006, this project has become available to everyone over 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. Twitter Inc. office is based in San Francisco and has more than 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, workers and employers. Founded in December 2002 and launched on May 5, 2003, it is primarily used for professional communication. In 2006, LinkedIn expanded to 20 million members. As of June 2013, LinkedIn reported more than 259 million users from over 200 countries.

The most famous social networks in Russia

VK (originally VKontakte) is the largest social network in Russia. It is available in several languages, but is especially popular among Russian-speaking users, particularly 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 site for finding former classmates and old friends. It is popular in Russia and other former Soviet republics. The site's administration currently claims that it has over 200 million registered users and 45 million daily unique visitors. This resource has existed for eight years.

Livejournal

Forecast and development

This article gave a detailed answer to the following question: “Social networks - what is it?” Currently, new and new resources similar to those listed above are appearing, but every year it is becoming more and more difficult for them to withstand competition and become leaders.

Social network- an interactive multi-user website, the content of which is filled by the network participants themselves. The site is an automated social environment that allows a group of users with a common interest to communicate. These include thematic forums, especially industry ones, which have been actively developing recently.

Communication is via a web-based internal mail service or instant messaging.

Structure

And if LinkedIn was created for the purpose of establishing/maintaining business contacts, then the owners of MySpace and Facebook relied primarily on satisfying the human need for self-expression. Indeed, according to Maslow's pyramid, self-expression is the highest human need, even ahead of recognition and communication. Social networks have become a kind of Internet haven where everyone can find the technical and social basis for creating their virtual “I”. At the same time, each user received the opportunity not only to communicate and create, but also to share the fruits of their creativity with a multi-million audience of one or another social network.

Largest networks

The popularity of different social networks varies in different regions of the world. Thus, 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 European countries;
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).

The leaders in the number of users are 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)

• VNet (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 through which users can post 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 by taking into account their opinions about the product, how to make it better, etc., thereby allowing consumers to participate in the promotion of the product and increasing their awareness.

Advertising

For advertisers, social networks provide unique opportunities to reach consumers directly. Every day, millions of users conduct conversations about companies, their products and services, sharing their opinions and impressions. As a result, an individual member of the online community can ruin (or vice versa) the reputation of a company with a multimillion-dollar turnover.

The size of the advertising market on social networks is growing steadily. In 2007, according to estimates from the analytical company 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, the forecasts take into account the costs of creating widgets and applications for the first time. According to a recent eMarketer study, the total revenue of social networks from advertising in 2011 will reach $5.54 billion. According to eMarketer forecasts, the size of the advertising market in social networks will double by 2013.

Currently, companies in sectors such as consumer goods, liquor manufacturers, automakers, and entertainment companies are showing the greatest interest in social networks. Until recently, consumer brands have not pursued an aggressive advertising policy on the Internet, but for 2009 many of them have planned budgets for marketing on social networks.

The growth of advertising on social networks is leading to a squeeze on budgets. Such popular platforms for advertising as search networks, websites of large newspapers and magazines, and online media are now forced to reduce advertising budgets or adapt to the realities of Web 2.0, optimizing their sites for social media functionality.

Dangers

Many people do not understand that the information they post on social networks can be found and used by anyone, including those who may not have good intentions. Information about members of social networks can be found by their employers, parents, children, former or current wives or husbands, debt collectors, criminals, law enforcement agencies, and so on.

For example, there is a known case where a criminal looked for women who looked similar to herself, killed them and sold their apartments.

There is a known case of the manifestation of psychosomatic disorders due to addiction to communication on social networks. In Belgrade, user Svetlana Pavlović ended up in a psychiatric clinic after her post on the social network Facebook did not arouse interest among her friends. The clinic’s doctors called this case “Svetlana syndrome,” explaining the patient’s behavior as ordinary stress from the dissatisfaction of an 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 leakage.

D. Boyd, based on survey materials in 16 US states, concluded that there are two main “fears” caused by social networks: sexual harassment and information confidentiality. 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, during an online survey of German and Austrian students, received the following list of risks: data confidentiality, the spread of spam, the possibility of losing personal information, creating a negative image, Internet addiction. S.V. Bondarenko, based on a study of virtual network communities in the south of Russia, concluded that there are the following forms of manifestation of deviant behavior: hacking, violation of secrecy, defamation, cyberterrorism, computer pedophilia. A survey conducted on the State University-Higher School of Economics portal showed that, according to respondents, networks are “delaying” and take up too much time,” crowd out real communication, and provide “redundancy of communication and information.” “Privacy issues,” the report mentions, “are less of a concern for social media users. Basically, these fears are related to the easy availability of contact information for spammers, and not to the work of intelligence services."

Applications

Social software is a wide range of software systems that allow users to interact and share data. This method of computer-mediated interaction has become popular with the advent of social sites such as MySpace, Facebook, Odnoklassniki.ru, media sites Flickr and YouTube, and commercial sites eBay.

Many of these applications share common characteristics such as open APIs, service-oriented design, and the ability to host data and media files remotely. Such applications are usually classified 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 (various media formats) interaction between individuals and their groups. In contrast to communication tools, the emphasis is on supporting the connectedness of users and the communication mechanisms between them. In contrast to communication tools, which are typically 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.).

The following examples of software systems that belong to social software can be mentioned:

• 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 chats (IRC - Internet Relay Chat) allow several users to communicate simultaneously in real time.
• Internet forums have replaced electronic conferences (which arose before the advent of the WWW). A forum user can create a new "topic" that is accessible 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 messages in his journal, while other users (readers) can leave comments on them.
• Wiki directories (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 marketing and business applications for social networks will grow in the coming years. “Social media is becoming more popular and applications are emerging for a variety of purposes, which will continue to grow this market,” said Rachel Happe, research manager at IDC. “We expect applications for various marketing companies and firms, as well as enterprise applications, to become popular soon.”

In addition, the report states that the growth of the social networking applications market will slow down only by 2011.

see also

Notes