It seems like not a week goes by without hearing news of yet another social media startup rapidly attracting millions of new users. Consider instagram, the photo sharing program with your own social site. It launched in 2010 and was bought by Facebook last week for $1 billion. Prayed interestwhich also launched two years ago and was considered the fastest growing social site to surpass the 10 million unique visitor mark (which happened earlier this year).
With so many sites already out there, it can be confusing to know which ones are the best to use for personal or business purposes. Also, it is debatable who is at the top of the most popular list, depending on which ranking source you use.
For our list of the most popular sites, we have referred to Experian’s Hitwise statistics, which measures Internet market share by pulling data directly from ISP networks, Alexa, web metrics sites, and statistics collected by the planner. of Google ads.
top 5
1. Facebook remains the undisputed king of social networking sites. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg and some of his friends, it has more than 950 million users, making it the most used social network. The ability to fully customize an account, add photos and videos, tag friends, send messages, and form custom group accounts for site popularity. Facebook combines the features of all other social networking sites and optimizes them for easy access and use.
It has also been extremely popular for branding and reach, although its new timeline feature may limit certain marketing efforts. The site is also mobile-friendly, making social connectivity faster and more convenient, though some complain that its mobile app is limited.
two. Youtube it focuses primarily on video sharing, and anyone with an account (a Google account for that matter), can upload and view videos posted almost anywhere in the world (some countries like China and Turkey have banned the service). Founded in 2005 by three former PayPal employees, Google bought it for $1.65 billion in 2006.
YouTube is free to use, and in addition to posting videos to the site, they can also be embedded on individual websites. You can find anything on YouTube from TV shows, commercials, movie trailers, and product reviews to comedy skits and how-to videos. However, unless verified as a user in good standing, videos are limited to 15 minutes in length.
More than 800 million unique users access the site each month.
3. Twitter, Unlike the previous two, it focuses on microbloggingwith users limited to posting messages with a maximum number of characters of 140.
Jack Dorsey founded the extremely popular site in 2006. To date, Twitter has more than 170 million users, averaging more than 300 million tweets every day. One feature of Twitter is that it allows users to follow other users. Therefore, many celebrities and athletes have used Twitter to communicate with their fans.
Companies and brands use Twitter in many ways: as a public relations channel, tweeting about press releases, offers and other announcements; regularly communicate with customers and conduct surveys; as well as a customer service channel.
Four. yahoo! answers It’s surprisingly number 4 on this list, but with 130 million registered users and offering a niche that focuses primarily on asking questions and giving answers on specific topics, it fills an empty rung on the social media ladder.
There are basic profile pages, where you can list your interests, as well as your Yahoo Answer contacts and friends. Users can choose whether they want to receive updates on posted questions or answers. Points and levels show how engaged a user is in asking or answering questions, with more points earned by the latter.
One drawback of this site is the fact that responses to queries are not filtered or monitored; therefore, the quality may be incomplete.
5. LinkedIn with 96 million unique users per month, it makes it number 5 on the list. Mainly used for professional networks, users connect with others based on a certain level of relationship. Reid Hoffman and the PayPal founders launched the site in May 2003.
Job, personal and business opportunities can be found through direct connections and second and third degree connections, which are those connected to your contacts. Individuals and businesses can set up profiles, and users can join groups, which are generally career-related and used for discussions of career or business-related topics, as well as employment purposes.
the rest of the best
6. Tumblr It’s kind of a combination of Twitter and interest in that it is based on images, but with text also as part of the equation. It’s easy to use and those with a Spotify account can now share music. The site has more than 45 million unique visitors per month.
7 interest is the newbie on the block that has generated a storm of interest, quickly outpacing both older and newer social networking sites. It focuses on sharing photos between users and its design is similar to a Bulletin board, where users can repost (or repin) other users’ images, and can also like images. Images can be published in categorized collections, such as Architecture, Favorite Places, and Sports, and linked to the original source.
Founded in 2010 by Ben Silbermann, the vast majority of users are women. Users are “invited” to join, or one can request to join, but the invitation may or may not come through. Time magazine listed it as one of the 50 best websites of 2011.
As of April 12, the site has 31 million unique users per month. Companies and brands using Pinterest range from Sony Music and Whole Foods to the Wall Street Journal, posting graphics, celebrity photos, fashion shots and more.
8. My space it was initially at the top of the food chain (from 2003 to 2008), but its decline in popularity was due to stiff competition and complicated site design.
It is popular with musicians and has rearranged its layout a bit in recent years.
9. Google+ It started out as Pinterest as an invitation-only social networking site, but due to demand in September 2011 it was opened to everyone 18 and older. In January this year, 13-year-olds in the US the site.
While the number of users has been difficult to track, Hitwise ranks Google+ with a 53% web traffic market share and is reported to have over 400 million registered users by the end of this year.
The social networking site uses Circles to organize people into groups such as family, friends, business, or whatever circle you want to create. Images, text, video, and the like can be posted, and you can link to your Blogger (another Google product) profile, or vice versa.
10 An American programmer who wanted to keep in touch with his friends and keep them updated on what he was doing started live diary in 1999. The company moved to Russia in 2009, which was bought by the Russian company SUP Media in 2007. Since then it has grown to about 17 million users who maintain online diaries or blogs, with a “friends list” which contributes to its social aspect. It is used a lot for political comments.