The very first social networks, communication on the Internet. Social network

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Social network– 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 (by certain parameters, For example, educational establishments, 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

There is a huge interest in communication sites that is observed last years, quite explainable. 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 with mobile devices– almost 90% of visitors use smartphones and tablets rather than desktop computers.

At the same time, if a couple of years ago 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 hold the interest of users.

YouTube

Video hosting You Tube from Google is the most popular video network in the world. It is also considered a social network, as it allows users to register, communicate, and share their videos. Here you can find information for every taste, from entertainment to educational courses. Founded in February 2005 in the USA. At the beginning of 2018, there are over 1.5 billion active users, and the result of several million views of popular videos is quite achievable.

Main features:

• Post your videos for viewing.
• 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

Application for different operating systems for publishing pictures and short videos (up to 60 seconds), viewing materials of other participants, with the ability to rate and comment. Since its launch in 2010, Instagram has reached more than 1.1 billion registered members. In 2012, it was acquired by Facebook Inc. Popular Features:

• Blogging.
• Photo processing - effects, frames, special shooting modes, collages.
• Creating your profile and publication feed.
• View friends, rate and comment on their posts.
• Cross-posting – simultaneous posting of material on several social networks.
• Search 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 foundation (2005), it has attracted 600 million participants. Available in English and Chinese.

Sina Weibo

A Chinese version of a microblog, basically similar to Facebook and Twitter. Since its inception (2009), it has attracted the attention of more than 500 million users. Development is hampered by the support of English and Chinese languages ​​and government censorship of the country. It has a convenient tree structure for comments, an online shopping service, and a premium profile with advanced functionality. On the Internet you can communicate, meet new people, download and view photos, search for interesting information and follow the news.

Google+

Google's own development. The operating principle is based on the concept of circles. The user creates them himself, regulating who and what information will be available. Main features: sharing photos, videos, links, games, group chats, support for mobile devices, video conferencing. Launched in 2011, there are more than 135 million users. 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 advice from colleagues, discussing professional issues, looking for a job or employees, getting recommendations are the tasks of LinkedIn. The project was launched in 2003 and purchased by Microsoft in 2016.

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 various fields from show business to sports maintain their microblogs on Twitter. The total number of accounts exceeds 330 million.

What social networks are there in Russia?

In Russia, the popularity of online communication services does not lag behind global indicators. Only they have their favorites - Russian VKontakte and Odnoklassniki. Anyone who promotes their products or brand through SMM is required to know their leaders in this industry.

The rating of all social networks in Russia is estimated as part of the traffic that is created by this service on the Runet. The assessment is based on the results of 2018 studies of the largest Russian statistical data collection services on the Internet: Yandex.Metrica, SpyLog/Openstat, LiveInternet, Hotlog, [email protected].

These services lead in activity among Russians. Let's briefly look at two main national developments.

In contact with

Russian network created in 2006. Owned by Mail.Ru Group. Supports over 90 languages, over 460 million registered users. Most popular among Russian-speaking users - the leader of all social networks in Russia in terms of use. Possibilities:

• Creating your own page.
• Correspondence with other project participants.
• Sending pictures, audio and video recordings.
• Online cooperative games.

This resource is most often chosen for online stores and sales. This is facilitated by a wide range of opportunities and a large Russian-speaking audience.

Classmates

Another successful development by Mail.Ru Group. It ranks third in popularity in Russia with more than 330 million participants. The project is available in 14 languages ​​and has been operating since 2006. Main features:

• Your own page for publishing information.
• Communication by messages or video calls.
• Search for people using different parameters.
• Payment for goods, money transfers.
• Additional paid options (invisibility, blacklist...).

The Odnoklassniki project works both full and in mobile version, which is convenient, 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.

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Main Best Useful Visited Popular Media Business Internet

• Social network

• In contact with

  VKontakte is a universal tool for communicating and finding friends and classmates, which is used daily by tens of millions of people. We want friends, classmates, classmates, neighbors and colleagues to always remain in contact.

  Attendance: 15 | Transitions: 2544

• Instagram

  Attendance: 16 | Transitions: 2135

• Tumblr

  Tumblr is a microblogging service with social networking elements that allows users to post text messages, images, videos, links, quotes and audio recordings to their tumblr, a short-format blog. Post whatever you want. Share photos, videos, quotes, chats, links and text posts.

  Attendance: 65 | Transitions: 1983

• Badoo

  Fill your life: communicate, flirt, meet new people and have fun! Among millions of users, find those you like. Chat with new friends! Badoo is already the world's largest and fastest growing social network for meeting new people.

  Attendance: 943 | Transitions: 2436

• World is Small

  Attendance: 2007 | Transitions: 2092

• Foursquare

  Foursquare helps you and your friends discover new, exciting places and get the most out of each of them. Get personalized recommendations, find what you're looking for, and use tips and special offers, wherever you are!

  Attendance: 2266 | Transitions: 695

• 2ch.hk (Two.h)

  Two.ch is a forum system where you can communicate quickly and freely, where any point of view has the right to life. There is no registration and no need to subscribe, although this does not relieve you of the need to follow the rules. All forums (except for /B/red), and their list is below, have their own clearly limited topics. In a word, everything that is not prohibited by the rules of a particular forum and relates to its topic is permitted on this forum.

  Attendance: 3346 | Transitions: 913

• Surfingbird

  Attendance: 18048 | Transitions: 551

• MillionStatus

  The funniest statuses for classmates, new and funny VKontakte statuses, statuses about love, life and mood. Only the best and new statuses for icq or qip.

  Attendance: 32693 | Transitions: 564

• Get-Styles

  The service allows you to easily and quickly change your design theme for the VKontakte social network, without any specific knowledge! More than 800 different designs, themes. Choose any!

  Attendance: 34097 | Transitions: 367

• Nekto.me

  Attendance: 41946 | Transitions: 1023

• PinME

  Attendance: 42701 | Transitions: 709

• Full of energy

  Attendance: 57944 | Transitions: 447

• eNeighbors

  Neighbors noted many places. Very different, believe me. Sights around the world, illegal dumps, cities and towns, secrets. But why did they do this? Why are these places being discussed?

  Attendance: 148773 | Transitions: 539

• Classmates

  Attendance: 172365 | Transitions: 1650

• Friend around

  A convenient service for communicating and finding new friends, which will show who is near you. Here you can download the FriendVokrug app for free on your phone or computer.

  Attendance: 199449 | Transitions: 1001

• Nirvana.FM

  Attendance: 217327 | Transitions: 637

• Netlog

  Netlog is a young community through which users can stay connected and expand their social network. On Netlog you can create your own blog page, upload photos, watch videos, find events and play games.

  Attendance: 322848 | Transitions: 317

• FileCloud

  FileCloud.me - social network synchronization service! Upload, copy and synchronize your photos and files from different social networks. networks in 1 click. Do you want to conveniently upload or download music on VKontakte using the program? Copy all your albums and photos from Facebook to Odnoklassniki? Synchronize files on all social networks with each other and with your computer?

  Attendance: 332476 | Transitions: 254

• Flirchi

  Attendance: 575675 | Transitions: 874

• No collective farm

  Attendance: 604336 | Transitions: 939

• Pluso

  Pluso are the most popular social buttons in Russia. When visiting website pages, share interesting information with friends on social networks. Many pages can be mailed, bookmarked, or printed

  Attendance: 949413 | Transitions: 337

• The world is me

  Worldis.me is a network for comfortable communication, with rich communication and convenient management. Read and speak out: opinions, blogs with photos, videos and music. Chat: video chat, group chat, dating service Invitations. View and show: photos and videos. Listen to: music and online radio. Groups and communities. Custom online stores. Everything is absolutely free.

  Attendance: 1035499 | Transitions: 862

• i-Worker

  iWorker.ru is the most democratic platform in the Russian segment of the Internet for forming relationships between people interested in study, work and career, where professionals can earn money with their knowledge. Every day, users of our portal actively exchange information about everything related to professional and personal development - from training courses and lessons to information about companies and employees.

  Attendance: 1076419 | Transitions: 268

• Social media

  Status catalog

  Attendance: 6514708 | Transitions: 321

• MegaMix

  MegaMixGroup International advertising and social portal. The MegaMix social network is a useful platform for finding acquaintances and friends, pleasant communication and useful pastime!

  Attendance: 9332599 | Transitions: 554

• Eco-World

  ECO-MIR.org is an environmental social network that unites people and all areas promoting an environmentally friendly lifestyle. Find out more people If you are interested in eco-life, you will find new friends. See many interesting videos helping to live more environmentally friendly and comfortable. You can easily find eco-services and eco-products for all occasions, and if you have something to offer, millions of people will know about you. All eco-entrepreneurs, eco-groups, eco/ancestral settlements will become available to you.

  Attendance: 18995901 | Transitions: 553

Copyright © 2019 Bravica Inc.

In the modern Internet space, one of the key roles is played by resources that are designated by the term “social networks”. From the point of view of implementation, social networks are actually “self-developing organisms”, because This development directly depends on the users of such resources: real life is in full swing inside such sites: communication takes place, friendships/relationships are formed, someone becomes popular, communities are organized, etc. We present to your attention overview of social networks in Russia and the world, which gained the greatest popularity and united millions of armies of users under “their wing”.

For your convenience, we provide a list of all social networks included in our review. The links are clickable, and if you are too lazy to read everything, just click on the social network you are interested in :)

So, here is our Top 11:

And, as you already understood, he was appointed to the role of the beginner review of the social network Badoo.com.

Badoo.com - social dating network

The site owes its appearance in 2006, as stated in the “About Us” block, to a small international group of entrepreneurs and businessmen. The birthplace of the social network is Foggy Albion, and specifically London. True, the owner of the company that developed badoo, according to Wikipedia, is Russian entrepreneur Andrey Andreev, who, like any decent Russian businessman, registered the company in Cyprus. But the point, of course, is not who owns what and where it is registered. The bottom line is that there are 311.5 million Badoo users! This is according to the site itself - it even has a special counter that “winds up” 3-4 joined users every second. I remember that several years ago VKontakte had a similar “temptation” :) But let's not talk about competitors now - the matter will come to them later.

What is the main purpose of the site? Like any social network – of course, communication. True, Badoo has a “bias”. The fact is that this is not just a “social network”. Badu is first and foremost a social dating network. Well, and as a result, communication and everything that accompanies dating.

Since the topic of dating on the Internet does not in any way reduce its relevance or popularity, hence the above-mentioned 311 million registered users. In addition to this figure, we will give a couple more.

So, statistics. The level of monthly visits to the Badoo social network floats around 150 million, each user spends an average of 12 minutes on the site.

Badoo is an international social network available in 46 languages. Which is quite reasonable, because “love is submissive to all ages.” And nationalities :) The social network is most popular among ardent Brazilians - 11.42% of all visits come from this country. According to this indicator, Russia is half as “active”, although it is also in the lead with 5.11% of total site traffic.

The social network interface is convenient, simple and clear. There is functionality that is only available for money (the so-called “premium”). Badoo definitely deserves the attention of those who want not just abstract communication, but have a specific goal: establishing (as stated on the website of the social network itself - “quick, elegant and easy”) dating, searching for a “soul mate”, relationships, a desire in general to “have a good time” time” (again, quote from Badoo). Perhaps the main limitation is age. If a user is under 18 years old, according to the rules of the Badoo social network, he does not have the right to register with it and use its functionality. Everything else that fits within the framework of decency and copyright is permitted by the site rules. So if you are already 18, but don’t have a “soulmate”, run to Badoo!

Facebook.com is the largest social network in the world

There’s probably no need to even introduce the next “mastodon” of the world of social networks. 1.4 billion people around the world at the word Facebook begin to frantically check their accounts on this international social network. 1.4 BILLION! The figure is simply unimaginable.

The social network Facebook.com has firmly secured its position as the No. 1 social network in the world and is unlikely to give up this position. Rather, on the contrary, if the hyper-ambitious plans of the youngest billionaire, and part-time creator and director of the social network Mark Zuckerberg, to “internetize” the entire 7 billion humanity of the Earth can be realized, the figure of 1400,000,000 users will increase multiple times.

So, what is Facebook and what do people use it for?

Growing out of a student project by M. Zuckerberg, launched in 2004 under the name Thefacebook.com - a site for interaction between American students - the No. 1 social network soon (in 2006) became available for registration to anyone over the age of 16. The popularity among users is due to the developed functionality of the social network (in addition to the direct ability to communicate, extensive entertainment and educational functionality, thanks to many applications, games, and communities), the ongoing development of the site (Facebook was a “pioneer” in terms of introducing many “tricks” characteristic of social networks and which made them so popular). If the reader is interested in learning more about social network No. 1, we recommend that you refer to the following reviews published on our website:

Google+: not the most successful Google project

Now let's look at the brainchild of the Internet giant Google, namely social network called Google +.

Google has been hatching plans to create its own social network since 2003. And the implementation of these plans was very “branchy” and lengthy: attempts were made (both successful and not entirely) to absorb existing social services, their own projects were created, and then abandoned. Disparate services were united and transformed - Google, like Frankenstein, with varying enthusiasm, but still carried out a plan to create its own social “monster”. And in 2011, they finally succeeded: based on the Google Profiles, Google Circles projects, integration with Buzz and Picasa, the new social network Google Plus was born.

Initially, the social network was perceived in the Internet community very positively, even enthusiastically. Thanks to Google’s developments, the social network made it possible to organize the dissemination of information differently than other social networks (“Circles” made it possible to clearly differentiate which users would have access to this or that content); integration with Picasa made it possible to share photos uploaded to this service. It should also be noted that Google + was ahead of Facebook in introducing video chat into the social network. As a result, Google Plus was supposed to complete the formation of a “single Google space” around the user, uniting all kinds of Internet services around account Google. But... Unfortunately, this incredibly ambitious project never became a real competitor to Facebook: despite all the obvious advantages, Google Plus did not win the love of users. One of the factors for this failure was the lack of content as “rich” as Facebook and Twitter.

More than 660 million visits monthly is a very good indicator, and most likely this fact will not allow Google to abandon its social project. This is also indicated by the recent update of the interface - most likely Google still has some “trump cards” and Google Plus will still compete for a place in the sun in the world of social networks.

Largest social networks: Instagram

This social network has become actively widespread thanks to its focus on mobile platforms - Instagram has been actively distributed as an application on Android and iOS devices. The popularity is also due to the choice of the “main idea,” so to speak: Instagram is primarily a network for photographs (and short videos), and only then for communication and other functions characteristic of social networks. It is around posting, rating, commenting on photos/videos that the entire scheme of the social network is built.

As of 2016, the resource instagram.com is among the 10 most visited sites in the world, and in the “profile” category - social networks - it is firmly in 3rd place: ahead only of Facebook and Vkontakte.

Well, Instagram’s monthly traffic is already in the billions – on average, it is visited 1.5 billion times a month. The most active users of Instagram are in the USA and Russia.

If the Reader is an active user of social networks and likes to take photographs with his smartphone, then the social network Instagram will fit very organically into the “social life” of such a user, adding to the collection of tools for earning “likes” and increasing subscribers.

LinkedIn.com - business social network

From entertainment and photography to serious projects: social network Linkedin.com is an example of just such a resource.

This project positions itself as the largest social network for business communication. The statistics provided on the site itself are quite impressive: there are more than 400 million registered users on Linkedin. And the geography of these users includes 200 countries. And, as Wikipedia suggests, more than 150 business sectors are represented on this business social network.

The project was born in 2003 thanks to Reed Hoffman, a billionaire, writer, entrepreneur and simply talented person.

With the help of Linkedin, users can develop new business contacts, maintain a list of them, and this list of business contacts has a multi-purpose purpose. Already existing contacts, being an “intermediary” link, allow you to be introduced to other users, which directly affects the expansion of connections. There is a search for groups and companies based on the interests of the registered user. The user can also publish his resume, which, of course, may be of interest to others (employers, potential partners, etc.). Yes, you can look for a job using Linkedin, and many people do it very successfully. In a business social network, you can use the recommendation functions - recommend another user to someone else, or be “recommended” yourself.

You can post vacancies and interest groups.

According to SimilarWeb statistics, linkedin.com ranks 31st in the global ranking of Internet resources.

If you are interested in expanding your business contacts, especially in the English-speaking environment, then the business social network Linkedin can be a good tool for implementing such plans.

Myspace.com - a social network for creative individuals

It deserves attention, if only because it once held the title of the No. 1 social network in the world! But that was back in 2003-2008. The Internet giant Myspace.com was crushed by its growing competitor, the brainchild of Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook. This happened in 2008, and since that time the Myspace social network has failed to even come close to the leading position in the global ranking of Internet resources. However, despite all the difficulties, the change of managers, owners and development concepts, the site myspace.com still managed not to “sink into the abyss”: modern Myspace is a resource that has returned to its ideological origins as a site for creative individuals, at the same time dressed in modern , a nice looking and well functioning shell.

However, despite this, the site is visited monthly by about 15.5 million users, which, in principle, is an impressive figure.

Pinterest.com - social network for business

This social network is very specific in terms of functioning. It can perhaps be compared with Instagram, since it also uses photographs (and animation) as “key figures”. In Pinterest terminology, each uploaded image is called a pin, and these pins are pinned to “boards”, i.e. groups that the user forms based on some considerations known to him. It looks something like this:

Pins can be shared and discussed with friends. The Pinterest platform is considered by many as an excellent platform for business – product presentation and dissemination of information about it, for example. As the inscription on the social networking site itself says, “Pinterest is a place to find interesting and useful ideas for a business or hobby.”

The popularity of Pinterest is obvious - about 100 million users are registered on this international social network.

The site is on the 39th line in the global ranking of Internet resources, and in 9th place among the world's social networks.

The site is visited more than 760 million times monthly, with the majority of visits coming from the United States.

For those who try to be in the trend of modern Internet technologies, who prefer to work with graphics rather than text, getting acquainted with the social network Pinterest.com is definitely a must. shown. Moreover, according to analysts, the social network Lately is becoming increasingly popular in the Russian-speaking segment of the Internet.

Largest social networks: Twitter.com

In a review of social networks, it would be strange to ignore popular project entitled Twitter. This social network, along with Facebook and Instagram, has long become an integral attribute“social life” of many Internet users. The social network owes its popularity to its publication format: according to Twitter rules, posts, messages, links, etc. are left. must not exceed 140 characters. The name of the social network largely conveys its character. Translated from English, “Twit” means “twitter, tweet.” And there are more than 500 million such tweeters on this site.

Twitter was implemented in 2006 by Jack Dorsey, an American programmer and entrepreneur, and it grew out of an SMS service “for internal use” by employees of the Odeo company. The meaning of the service, conceived by Dorsey, was this: the user leaves a short message on his page, and all the “friends” subscribed to him instantly see it. The first twitter message was the line left by the creator of the social network: “Just setting up my twttr.” This was followed by a triumphant presentation of the service at the SXSW festival, during which the number of Twitter users jumped from 20,000 to 60 thousand in a day, and then on the rise.

So, the 2 “pillars” of the Twitter social network are short messages and subscribers. It is from the messages of those the user follows that his “feed” on the social network will be formed; Posts will be posted in reverse chronological order.

Twitter is most widespread on mobile devices, which is quite expected: on small screens, short and informative (though not always) messages are digested much easier than long “foot wraps” of someone’s articles, for example, on some blog.

Thanks to this social network, the technology of hashtags has received active, perhaps even excessive, development: as a rule, this is a word or phrase that succinctly characterizes the content of the entire post, preceded by the symbol “#” (octothorpe sign, if you are talking abstrusely). The “d” symbols also have specific functionality – placing it in front of the user’s nickname allows you to send a private message, and “@” is also placed in front of the user’s name and allows you to send him a reply/notification.

On this moment Twitter ranks 11th in the global ranking of world Internet resources, and 5th in the social networking segment.

Familiarization with this social network can be recommended to anyone who is interested in new events in the world, country or any particular area, who wants to receive information as quickly as possible or share it. By the way, Twitter is also very useful for business: it great tool to receive feedback, reviews and other types of operational interaction with the world.

Vk.com is the largest Russian social network

It's time to remember the largest Russian project in the field of social networking. Of course, we are talking about the well-known VKontakte.

By the way, the name of the Russian social network No. 1 could have been different - at first, when going through the options, we almost settled on “Studlist.ru”. However, the founders of VKontakte realized in time that this name was “niche” in nature and was not suitable for reaching a wider audience. As a result, at the suggestion of Pavel Durov, the project received a name that is now well-known to everyone.

The social network vkontakte.ru was launched in October 2006. Already in 2007, more than 3 million users were registered on the site, and Durov said that the resource had surpassed its main Russian-language competitor, Odnoklassniki.ru, in popularity.

VKontakte has absorbed the most popular and in-demand ideas in the world of social networks, while managing to maintain a certain balance in the issue of ease of perception and interface management, unlike Facebook, whose interface is oversaturated with functionality and in which an inexperienced person will need time to figure everything out. get comfortable.

If the Reader wants to get acquainted in detail with the features of the VKontakte social network, its interface and main capabilities, we recommend reading the article:

The statistics provided by SimilarWeb definitely please the eye of the management of the social network Vkontakte: 1st place among all web resources in Russia, 2nd in the global ranking of social networks, fourth among all world sites in general!

Ok.ru is the main competitor of VKontakte

Considering Vkontakte, we remembered its closest competitor on the Runet - the Odnoklassniki social network. So the next few lines are about her.

The project started almost simultaneously with VKontakte - in 2006. If VKontakte is called a Facebook clone, then odnoklassniki.ru are identical twins of the popular American social network classmates.com. Citizen A.M. Popkov, who worked in London, had experience in developing similar projects for European countries, and realized in time that in Russia this niche was a service for searching and communicating with classmates/groupmates, etc. – is still free. And, as expected, the social network Odnoklassniki very quickly gained a lot of users and popularity on the Runet: in less than a year of existence, 1,500,000 users registered on the website odnoklassniki.ru.

In contrast to the same VKontakte, the management of Odnoklassniki quite quickly decided that they needed to make money from users: in the history of the social network there was a stage of paid registration, and a time when the user received full functionality for an additional fee, and other points that negatively affected rating of the social network, but obviously had a positive impact on the wallets of the site owners. However, over time, obviously unsuccessful decisions were corrected, so the ok.ru website is still one of the most popular and visited Internet resources.

In global terms, this translates into 1.3 billion monthly visits. And, apparently, there are no prerequisites for a decrease in popularity and the number of visits yet.

Chinese social network Renren.com

Yes, it's a Chinese social network. And it ONLY works in Chinese. That does not prevent it from being the largest in terms of the number of registered users: Wikipedia shows a figure of 160 million. Yes, it’s not surprising - why come up with translations into other languages ​​if your potential users are 20% of the entire earth’s population?!

Initially, the social network was called xiaonei.com, and was, in fact, a copy of Facebook in Chinese. It gained life in 2005, and already in 2008 it gained the title of “China's largest online university community.” In August 2009, a “renaming” took place, after which the modern name Renren.com appeared

However, in terms of the number of visits, it is still among the “millionaires” with its 22 million monthly visits.

At the same time, you can understand where the Chinese brothers who do not live in China have mostly settled in the world :)

The social network renren.com can be recommended first of all to those who understand Chinese, secondly, for those who want to establish contacts and start communicating with Chinese youth (the majority of users are Chinese university students).

This review of social networks can be considered complete. Yes, several million-dollar resources, which many also call social networks (for example, Livejournal and Youtube), were left behind. This was done for the following reason: such sites, if they belong to social networks, are only indirect; their main tasks are other areas: blogging, video hosting, etc. This means they deserve a place in a separate thematic selection.

Experts have identified ten services that occupy leading positions in the world rankings and have managed to gather a record audience in their spaces. Global projects meet a variety of people living in different countries professing different religions, differing from each other in terms of income, age, interests, etc.

Facebook

For several years now, the fast and modern Facebook network has confidently occupied a leading position in all ratings. The site has already become the most popular and widespread project of this type in the world, but the number of users continues to increase every day, striving to include all mobile device owners. The quality of FB is also growing - new tools and capabilities are regularly introduced, work is accelerated, and integration with smartphones is improved.

Google+

It would be unacceptable not to include this one in our list of social networks, which unites millions of Google account holders. Any person who has registered email on the service of a popular search engine, can easily connect to Google+. The project is constantly evolving, and now in terms of the abundance of functions and capabilities, the service is practically not inferior to the leader - Facebook. So, just recently, developers provided users with the ability to create group video chats.

Twitter

It is no coincidence that Twitter is included in the list of social networks that are most popular. After all, this is the most convenient service for publishing short messages. Twitter provides its users with tools for publishing photo and video materials, and almost everyone uses it, including influential politicians and stars of world show business.

Instagram

This is a real paradise for photography lovers. Not long ago, Instagram was taken over by Facebook, but it still looks like an independent project. Every day, millions of new photos appear on the pages of the site, processed using beautiful bright filters. Users are happy to rate and comment on new publications.

Foursquare

Without Foursquare, the list of social networks would be incomplete. This service provides opportunities to communicate with friends online, but this is not its “trick” at all. By registering on the site, you register at a specific location on the map. And by adding friends, you get the opportunity to monitor their movements and meet if possible.

Tumblr

One of the fastest growing social networks on the Internet. It operates on the principle of a blog, which ensures its fast operation and enormous popularity among users. You get the opportunity to maintain your own online magazine, as well as view news and interesting publications from other participants.

What do we have?

So, let's continue to compile a list that includes the best social networks. In recent years, Russia has launched several promising projects that have every chance of breaking into the world TOP. Thus, the VKontakte website is breaking new and new traffic records. In addition to unlimited opportunities for communication (including via webcam), VKontakte users have access to a huge number of communities of different topics and directions, and the largest libraries of video and audio recordings in the Runet. In addition, the Odnoklassniki and My World projects from Mail.ru attract attention with many interesting functions and ease of use.

Specialized social networks

We wouldn’t even have enough pages to even just list all the social networks in the world. In this case, the list would also contain thousands of not too large-scale, but interesting projects that allow people of a narrow circle to communicate with each other. For example, many researchers, scientists and those who are simply interested in science use Academia.edu with great pleasure. And, for example, the CafeMom service allows you to chat and find a lot of interesting and useful information to young mothers. Christians also have their own social network, and it is called Cross.tv.

Every year more and more similar projects appear on the Internet, and therefore it is easier these days than ever to find like-minded people or advertise your product to those who will be truly interested in buying it.

Social networks in Russia (list)

Surely you know some social networks. networks that are popular among Russians, but the more sites are used, the higher the results will be (attracting traffic or advertising). Here is the complete list of Russian social networks:

1. VKontakte takes first place in all indicators in Runet. This site is also especially popular in Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan.
2. Odnoklassniki is a Russian-language social network that ranks second in Runet ratings.
3. Twitter is a foreign microblogging system that has long been included in the TOP of Russian-language sites.
4. Facebook is a leader at the global level, which has managed to overtake even search engines in terms of traffic.
5. Google+ is a network from a famous search engine. The audience is growing rapidly as profiles are used for different purposes (for example, on Google Play).
6. My Circle is a project suitable for finding jobs and employees for a company. In 2015, the project was bought by a large company, so now it should be actively developed.
7. YouTube - there are elements of a social network on this site (creating your own page, publications, comments), so it can also be included in the list.
8. My World - the developers claim that the project is a national Russian social network (third place in Runet in popularity).
9. Friend Around is one of those social networks. networks that require the installation of a special program to use.
10. Instagram - registration only from mobile devices, convenient photo sharing, excellent option for branding.
11. LinkedIn is one of the oldest social networks. networks created to establish business connections, find jobs and employees.
12. MySpace is another foreign project that has long been translated into Russian and has earned popularity on the Runet.
13. Small World - suitable for communicating with neighbors and people living near you. The functionality is wide, personal messages, photos, groups and so on.
14. Hello - on this site you can find old acquaintances, make new acquaintances, publish photos and even create your own blog.
15. Professionals - you can already guess from the name that this network was created for business people and professionals from different fields.
16. Fotostrana is one of the most popular dating sites in Russia, where you will also find functions inherent in social networks.
17. Mendoo - erotic social. a network in which registration is available only to adult users.
18. Diary - school social. network, it is used by both students themselves and teachers and parents.
19. On the Internet - in the Belarusian segment of the Internet this is a very popular project. High-quality social network in Belarus.
20. Twoo - More than 174 million people are registered on this site who are looking for new acquaintances.
21. Socl - the well-known Microsoft company is the owner of this social network. Not many people use it in Russia.
22. Classnet - a resource for schoolchildren has been created. Here they will find interesting communication and receive help in learning.
23. Flirchi is a large network used for meeting new people. It’s convenient that its developers created mobile applications a long time ago.
24. Galaxy is the most unusual dating site with social elements. networks. Mobile app also available.
25. Classmates - many people consider this site to be the first social network, since it was created in 1995.
26. Pinme - every day thousands of people share interesting pictures and post on this social network, which distinguishes the project from its analogues.

The result was a large list and it included all popular Russian social networks. It is useful for various purposes, and in addition to advertising and attracting visitors to sites, you can establish new connections and search for people with similar interests. I wish you success!!!