It is difficult to imagine the life of a modern person without virtual communication. Proof of this are the numerous social networks in which more than 60% of all Russians are registered. Communication with friends, business negotiations, watching movies and much more is now available on one site. In this article, you will learn about the most popular social networks in Runet and how to create your own account on them.
What is a social network?
A site where you can create a personalized page is called a social network. The first online communication resource was created in 1995 in America under the name Classmates. He became the prototype of the future Russian-language site Odnoklassniki.
The real boom of social networks began in 2003, when the most popular services appeared - Facebook and MySpace. This phenomenon came to Russia a few years later under the banner of the well-known site "VKontakte". Since then, the number of users who have created their own accounts has only grown, increasingly crowding out real communication.
Free social networks have helped bring human communication to a new level, which is supported by high technology. After all, ten years ago no one could have thought that the Internet would replace real meetings and phone calls.
However, everything is not as rosy as it might seem at first glance. By registering on social networks, most people run away from the real world. After all, in virtual reality you can put on a mask, try on a new role for yourself and be bolder. Unfortunately, not everyone can afford it Everyday life. Within a few years after the advent of social networks, numerous cases of psychosomatic disorders were recorded among users.
In addition, the danger of communication on the Internet lies in the dissemination of personal and contact data. After all, anyone can find all the information about another person and use it for their own selfish purposes. Therefore, before registering on the network and posting data about yourself, you should think about whether this is really necessary.
The most popular Runet network is VKontakte.
The most popular social network on the Russian Internet was founded in 2006 by web developer Pavel Durov. However, for the first year, registration on the site was available only to students of the St Petersburg University University after confirmation of the real data. But after being identified on the network, it became available to everyone. Every year, VKontakte is only becoming more popular, and today the number of daily visitors has exceeded 70 million.
To become a member of the largest portal in Europe, you need internet access and a mobile phone. Registration is carried out on the official website "VKontakte". The social network offers to fill out a small questionnaire, which indicates personal and contact details, after which you need to confirm your actions with a one-time code from an SMS message. Previously, registration was available without entering a number mobile phone, but with the advent of a huge number of fake pages, some restrictions were introduced by the VKontakte administration.
The social network opens up huge opportunities for its members. Immediately after registration, you can fill out your profile, post photos and start searching for acquaintances, friends, relatives and work colleagues. Thanks to the site, you can always be in touch with loved ones, listen to music, watch movies and just have a good time.
On the this moment VKontakte offers its members not only new developments among popular applications, but also an internal currency. This optimizes the work of numerous online stores and will help develop an economic culture within the project.
Mail.ru, or "My World"
This social network was created on the basis of search engine Mail.ru in 2007. At the moment, the resource is one of the three most popular sites for communication in the Russian-speaking segment. In 2014, the lists of Mail.ru social networks were replenished by the VKontakte resource, whose shares were sold by Pavel Durov.
The advantage of the portal "Mile.ru", a social network of which is available for registration to everyone, is a lot of convenient functions. For example, a global search engine, a Q&A service, weather, news, browser apps, and more. All this makes staying on the project as convenient as possible for work and entertainment. But the first place among all portal services is occupied by "My World".
The social network offers not only to communicate with friends, but also to find new acquaintances in communities, keep abreast of world events and listen to your favorite music. Statistics show that more than 30 million users visit the site daily. The lists of social networks are rightfully headed by Mail.ru. After all, it was she who managed to collect maximum amount users on the same resource.
Odnoklassniki.ru - social network for finding old friends
The social network "Odnoklassniki" also owes its appearance to the company Mail.ru, which created it on the prototype of the American site of the same name Classmates. The project was launched in March 2006 and has been successfully operating to this day.
The VKontakte and My World resources are very similar to the Odnoklassniki.ru website. The social network also allows you to chat with friends, share photos and read news feeds. In addition, the site has many applications with games that will help brighten up your leisure time and take a break from everyday worries.
However, the main difference is the contingent of "OK" users. The social network is aimed at finding old friends and acquaintances. Accordingly, finding a colleague in the army or a former colleague on the site will not be difficult. Statistics show that young people aged 14 to 30 prefer to use VKontakte, while the older generation spends time on the Odnoklassniki website. The network was originally created to search for those with whom a person once sat at the same desk a long time ago or skipped classes. Apparently, this is why the unspoken rule of age separation has formed on the Internet. And if you cannot find any person on VKontakte, then use the search on the Odnoklassniki website. The network has a convenient filter that allows you to specify age, place of residence and work, hobbies and much more.
Entertainment resource "Photo Country"
The entertainment social network "Photo Country" is more like a dating site than a portal for finding friends and relatives. The project has about 50 million users, among which the vast majority are residents of the CIS countries.
Many note that the design of the American Facebook resource became the basis for creating the interface of the Photo Country website. The social network is really similar to its Western counterpart, although it is not so popular among Runet users.
Most of the features on the site are paid. For example, in order to maintain your profile on the service, you need to constantly send paid SMS messages, otherwise the rating will drop rapidly. The system also offers to have your own pets and install various applications for communication and entertainment.
It should be noted that the resources of "VKontakte" or "Odnoklassniki" are absolutely free, unlike the site "Photo Country". The social network has not gained much popularity among Internet users. According to most, it is nothing more than another pumping out of money.
Blogging platform from "Yandex"
Social media listings generally do not include blogs. Although it was the blog that was originally created for networking and information exchange. The Ya.ru service is a product of the largest search engine Yandex, which occupies a leading position in the Runet.
Anyone can start their own online diary, access to which will be available only to users of the system. Thus, only registered friends can read the author's posts and leave comments.
A blog-based social network has its advantages, as a personal page is more like a full-fledged website. In addition, some blogging platforms allow users to subsequently buy domains with their content. This is especially true for bloggers with thousands of followers.
Registration on "Ya.ru" is free. After a simple identification procedure in the system, all the functions from Yandex, including the electronic mail service, become available to the user.
Share your opinion on "Otzovik"
This project is a major social network for consumers. We all buy certain goods every day, but we don’t even think that our opinion can help someone. The founders of the "Otzovik" project offer this opportunity to everyone. In addition, the opinion of each user is paid. Such a unique system has made the site very popular among housewives and young mothers who seek not only to communicate, but also to earn money on the Internet.
Registration on Otzovik is free. Just enter the address mailbox and WebMoney wallet number. Reviews with a large number of photos and voluminous text are the highest paid.
On the site, you can also invite friends and chat with friends, upload personal photos and learn a lot about goods, services, new movies and music. For activity, the system charges an additional coefficient, which subsequently affects the amount of payments. On average, active participants can earn up to 5 thousand rubles a month, of which more than half of the amount will be passive income from viewing reviews by other participants. To date, no social network pays its members for communication on the site, so Otzovik is rightfully considered a unique resource.
Free social network "Privet.ru"
Not the most popular site for communication on the Runet, which is confirmed by official lists of social networks. However, those users who are registered on "Privet.ru" consider the resource very convenient and functional. A lot of extensions, setting up a personal account, a lot of music and communities for communication - there is everything that a real social network should have.
"My Page", which is the main section of the site, has various templates that allow you to change the interface. There is currently no such function on any other resource for communication. For example, to change the VKonakte interface, you need to install a special browser plugin. And even after installation, the changes will be visible only to the user himself, while on "Privet.ru" the design of the page can be seen by all friends. The social network also allows you to share your news with the world, upload photos and exchange comments.
Unfortunately, due to the unpopularity of the site, not many people register on it and the chance of finding a friend or former classmate is very low. If the developers of the project are engaged in its promotion and popularization among Russian-speaking users, then "Privet.ru" has every chance of becoming a visited social network in the CIS countries. It is possible that in the future the project will be able to compete with such social networks as "VKontakte" or "My World".
Blog LiveJournal
The LiveJournal blogging platform, or, as it is commonly called, "LJ" ("Live Journal"), appeared back in 1999. At that time, no one knew about social networks, and people expressed themselves online through personal blogs. At the moment, bloggers not only share their ideas with the world, but also make good money on it by placing contextual advertising, referral links and affiliate program offers on their page.
On the LJ website, you can publish your own entries, create communities, share useful information and read articles from other users. At the same time, registration on "LiveJouranl" is absolutely free. When requesting popular phrases, almost all search engines of Runet issue articles with "Learn" on the first pages of the search. It should be noted that conventional social networks are not so adapted to key queries, and finding any information in them is much more difficult.
However, the rating of the site dropped significantly after 2011, when the administration of the resource began to block users for biased reasons. For several years, the accounts of well-known journalists, politicians and social figures were closed. The high requirements for content censorship on LiveJournal have caused users to switch to other resources where the control of posted material is not so strict. For example, "My World" is a social network in which everyone can express their point of view on a particular issue. In most cases, the site administration will not ban him for this.
Foreign social networks
The lists of Runet social networks are also supplemented by foreign resources, on which a huge number of Russians are registered. The most popular of them is Facebook. It was this site that was taken as the basis of the current VKontakte. Facebook is an international social network that connects users from all over the world. Registration in the system is free, however, activation of a phone number and confirmation of passport data is required.
The MySpace site does not have a Russian interface, as, for example, "Mile.ru". The social network is aimed exclusively at the English-speaking segment of users. Therefore, among the Russian-speaking population, Twitter and Instagram are more popular. These resources allow you to post your photos and short posts online, which only friends can see. The social network Instagram, for example, has gained immense popularity thanks to filters that allow you to transform any image into colorful pictures. Registration on both sites is absolutely free and no user identification is required, as on "OK".
The social network opens up many opportunities for Internet users. Now you can contact anyone via the Internet, and you don’t even need to know his phone number. Thanks to social networks, users open online stores and run their own businesses, find distant relatives and forgotten friends, get to know each other and even start families. However, despite all the conveniences of high technology, one should not forget about real communication, which cannot be replaced by any computer program.
Hello dear readers and friends!
Please answer the question:
What is it - a community of people who have gathered there according to their interests in order to communicate with each other, exchange information and their knowledge, or something else?
Or is it a huge network of cobwebs that lure people into its webs different ways, and then makes them there to forget about everything in the world.
Time flies unnoticed and a person, replacing the lack of real communication with virtual, understands that everything ... he was sucked in !!!
How does it happen? Why do people begin to replace their real life with communication on the Internet? Or are they just afraid to be misunderstood and ridiculed? And on the Internet, an unfamiliar interlocutor will listen, advise, and then simply disappear forever.
Now we will deal with you in this matter. But first, let's ask our favorite encyclopedia, Wikipedia, what it thinks of the social network.
What is a social network?
Social network (from the English social networking service) is a platform, online service or website designed to build, reflect and organize social relationships, visualization of which are social graphs.
These are websites that have been developed with the aim of introducing and connecting people with common interests. .
What does this give us? This gives us the opportunity to communicate together on various topics, as well as discuss photos and videos that we publish on our page.
But, soon Russia quickly made up for lost time. And now we have analogues of Western social services: VKontakte, Odnoklassniki.ru, My World.mail.ru, Among friends, Privet.ru and many others.
All users have the opportunity to communicate with each other, exchange photos, music, opinions.
You can create groups, communities, public pages together, where specific information will be exchanged.
You can also play various online games together.
The following social networks are now widespread and popular in the world: Facebook, Twitter, Google+.
Facebook, Myspace, VKontakte, Google+, Linked, Badoo, Tagbrand, Livejournal, Tumblr - microblogging service, Twitter - microblogging service, Friendster, Svoi Krug, Twoo, Viadeo… Odnoklassniki, Moi Mir.mail.ru, AlterGeo (geosocial network), Hydepark, Among friends, Privet.ru, My Circle…
For many people, the Internet is a means of self-expression. The need of a person to declare himself to the world contributes to the fact that social networks have become so closely integrated into our real life.
Social networks have for our society very great importance, because even the world's political leaders can no longer ignore the opinions of the participants in the social network. They have to take into account the opinions of people who are vigorously discussing political issues taking place in the world. For example, before political elections.
Often, many statesmen are themselves members of various social networks.
For example, the President of Russia is a user of popular social networks in Russia, and the President of the United States uses the Facebook network.
As you know, a social network today is also a kind of tool for promoting a business on the Internet. To promote your site, or any information product, we actively use the help of social network users.
These are natural links, as users share links of their own free will, not for money. As they say, for simple interest. This is the strength of their naturalness and peculiar weight in search engines. That is, it is obvious that this is a very promising direction for promotion - activities in social networks. Although quite difficult.
Among other things, we also make new acquaintances to promote our business and ideas.
But ... here you have to be especially careful.
After all, communicating with a person virtually, we can simply be deceived by the expectations of what actually has a completely different side. It is human nature to embellish reality a little, their external data and character.
Just how can I not remember a movie I recently watched a little humorous.
A certain girl periodically met on social networks to gain personal happiness. And who doesn't want it? Everyone wants!
But she was always wrong, she was just unlucky, and there were only deceivers of a man who positioned themselves as a successful businessman, exhibited other people's photos of such nice MACHOs on prestigious foreign cars. The girl believed, but in fact then she got a completely different result!
So please be vigilant and don't fall in love with people who may have someone else's face, someone else's thoughts downloaded from the Internet, and a different life.
Just chat on SKYPE, watch a person and then only draw conclusions!
If this is YOUR FATE, then you can’t get away from it anywhere.
That's all. We have considered a complex and at the same time simple question:
best regards, author Larisa Mazurova.
Which occupy leading positions in the world ranking, experts identified ten services that managed to gather a record audience in their open spaces. In global projects, there are a variety of people living in different countries professing different religions, differing from each other in terms of income, age, interests, etc.
For several years now, fast and modern Facebook network confidently occupies 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 for the number of all mobile device owners. The quality of FB is also growing - new tools and features are regularly introduced, work is accelerated, and integration with smartphones is improved.
Google Plus
It would be inadmissible not to include in our list of social networks this one, which unites millions of Google account holders. Any person who has registered an e-mail on the service of a popular search engine can easily connect to Google+. The project is constantly developing, and now, in terms of the abundance of functions and capabilities, the service is practically not inferior to the leader - Facebook. So, most recently, developers have provided users with the ability to create group video chats.
In the list of social networks that are most popular, Twitter was by no means accidental. After all, this is the most convenient service for publishing short messages. Twitter provides its users with tools for posting photos and videos, and almost everyone uses it, including influential politicians and world show business stars.
This is a true paradise for photography lovers. Not so long ago, Instagram was taken over by Facebook, but so far it 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 an opportunity to communicate with friends online, but its "trick" is not at all in this. By registering on the site, you register at a specific location on the map. And by adding friends, you get the opportunity to follow their movement and meet if possible.
Tumblr
One of the fastest growing social networks on the Internet. It operates on the principle of a blog, which provides it with fast work and huge popularity among users. You get the opportunity to maintain your own online journal, as well as view news and interesting publications from other members.
What do we have?
So, let's continue to make a list that includes the best social networks. Russia for last years issued several promising projects at once, which have every chance of breaking into the world TOP. So, more and more attendance records are being beaten by the VKontakte website. In addition to limitless opportunities for communication (including via webcam), VKontakte users have access to a huge number communities of various subjects and orientations, the largest libraries of video and audio recordings in Runet. In addition, the Odnoklassniki and My World projects from Mail.ru attract attention with many interesting features and ease of use.
Specialized social networks
Even a few pages would not be enough for us to even simply list all the social networks in the world. After all, in this case, the list would also include 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 just interested in science use the Academia.edu website with great pleasure. And, for example, the CafeMom service allows you to chat and find a lot of interesting and useful information 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 finding like-minded people or advertising your product to those who will be really interested in buying it is easier today than ever before.
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 idea of this booming market. Over the past two years, the popularity of social networks has increased markedly. Everyone can find a network to their liking, there are networks for dogs, parents, book lovers and shopaholics. In social networks, in my opinion, it is very useful and interesting to spend time. It is because of the growing interest in social networks that I created this list. I think that it will come in handy for those who, despite existing profiles in MySpace or Bebo, are ready to look for something new and interesting.
Please note - 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 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 private beta by invitation).
MySpace is the largest social network in the world. She conquered the United States with great speed, now MySpace 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. Functionally, Bebo is very similar to MySpace. Initially, Bebo was created in order to communicate between friends, but later the network has grown and currently has about 40 million users.
Recommended for: teenagers, young adults
Tagworld was founded in autumn 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 spare 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: Brazilian youth.
AIM pages - The youngest social network among the most popular. This is AOL's attempt to push MySpace into the social networking market. It was believed that AIM Pages would be a real breakthrough, but she 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 distinctive features system is that you can download music from iTunes for money, add it to your profile. On a free account, you can upload photos up to a whole gigabyte. Kelly Clarkson, Jessica Simpson, Tira Banks have profiles on Hi5.
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 originated in Korea and has grown to phenomenal proportions. The daily income of this network is about 300,000 dollars. Now Cyworld is gradually spreading to the US. The network has its own currency (acorns), and each user has his own "minihompy" (profile). Users can decorate their "minihompy" and keep in touch with each other.
Recommended: Teenagers, young adults, Koreans
Tagged is 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. Tagged is slowly gaining popularity among teenagers in the US, but compared to MySpace, it is always secondary.
Recommended for teens
Popist is very similar to MySpace, both in interface and focus. Offers users a large number of open features, such as the ability to integrate with other social networks.
Recommended for teens
Friendster, one of the first networks launched as a “social experiment”, has recently acquired a patent for “social networks”. The network has grown very quickly, but by today it has completely fallen and currently occupies less than 1% of the social network market.
Recommended for teens
Tribe - not so long ago this network was acquired by NBC. The main task of Tribe is not so much in dating and communication, but in uniting users' own social networks. Provides the ability to create so-called “clans”, and is also very well localized due to these same clans.
Recommended for teens
Facebook is a start-up from Silicon Valley. Widespread among colleges and universities in most English-speaking countries. It is the second most popular network after MySpace in the US. This network is not yet available in many countries, but is steadily developing and growing.
ConnectU is very similar to Facebook. It is also designed for students of colleges and universities. 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: adults
PeopleAggregator is Marc Canter's attempt to carve out a niche in the social media space. Based on open standards and functionalities. One of the distinguishing features is that this is just a demo version of the software, which can be purchased later.
Recommended: adults
MommyBuzz - Launched just a couple of months ago, MommyBuzz is designed to enable moms to connect online and 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 science 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 celebrities like paper dolls? Originally called Paperdoll Heaven, Stardoll does exactly that. With a strong social network at its core and almost a million users, Stardoll is gaining mega popularity in the world of kids and teens much like Neopets did a few years ago.
Recommended for: children/teenagers
Imbee – There are a lot of sites for teens, but what about kids? 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 you can't get one, go to Imbee!
Recommended: 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 pictures of dogs, tell dog stories, make new friends(dogs)!
Recommended for: dogs and their owners
Catster is practically the twin brother of Dogster, 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 to be for your cats, dogs and other furry pets. Launched in early 2004, it has grown into a fairly large community of animal lovers.
Recommended for: furry animals and their owners
BookCrossing - In the real world, bookcrossing (book exchange) is carried out like this: someone leaves a book in a public place for others to take and read and then do the same. The goal of the BookCrossing website is to run the same process in the virtual world.
Recommended for: book lovers
Boompa is a site for car enthusiasts, and there are certainly a lot of them on the Internet. The purpose of the network is to become your online garage. Car enthusiasts can show off their “cars” here, find recommendations for their improvement, 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 cinephiles. Here you can find reviews and recommendations, meet other moviegoers. Spout is a good place to visit before you are going to rent a movie.
Recommended for movie buffs
MOG is a Silicon Valley startup whose goal is to connect music lovers with the same interests. A very interesting way to meet new people, also here you can discover new musical directions that you did not know about before.
Recommended: for music lovers
Gusto. There are websites about cars, movies, music, books, animals, but what about travel? Gusto is just a place that brings travelers together based on their lifestyle (expressed in preferences). Here you can also find tons of information, recommendations and travel reviews.
Yub.com combines a social network and shopping. The goal of Yub.com is to provide a sustainable online shopping experience. The "cash back" system is used, when, if one user helps another or vice versa, both users have the opportunity to receive CashBack. interesting way make purchases.
Recommended for: lovers of (online) shopping
Yelp (from the creators of PayPal) is a site similar to Yub in many ways, 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 than on a consumer-oriented product. Currently only available in the US.
Recommended: Any U.S. Resident (Especially in Big Cities)
- according to surveys, the most popular business network, LinkedIn's goal is to unite colleagues and business partners, to help find new ones. With close to 5 million users, LinkedIn remains popular with business audiences.
Recommended: Mercenaries and businessmen
biddingBuddies - often on auction sites like eBay you have to deal with many people. BiddingBuddies will help you with this. It is the only social network exclusively for eBay users. Now, if you are participating in the auction, why not make friends with the opponents.
Recommended: eBay users (buyers and sellers)
Faqqly - There are so many things you would 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 they want.
Recommended for: curious – teenagers, youth
With the spread of the Internet, there are more and more questions from various users that affect social networks - what is it and how do they differ from other sites. The most correct answer to them would be to define such networks as platforms for building between people who share certain interests, activities, or have real connections outside the Internet. As a rule, the functionality of a social network is to provide each user with his personal profile, the ability to create links with other accounts, as well as a number of additional services.
Thus, social networks on the Internet are sites that provide services that allow people to create a public profile, add a list of users with whom they can share various information and keep in touch. Most of these resources have a means of user interaction through, for example, instant messaging.
Social networks - what is it today?
These sites are now diversified and include new information and communication tools such as photo/video sharing and blogging. In addition, on the basis of many social networks there are so-called Internet communities that unite people according to narrower interests and preferences. Regardless of the original purpose, social networks allow users to exchange ideas, photos, messages, activities, events, connect with different people of interest, and so on.
What is their main difference?
Basically, these services unite people according to various classifying criteria - former schools, universities, places of work, hobbies, and so on. Each country has the most popular social network, the formations in which (groups, publics, communities) are unique in accordance with local traditions. In addition, some services have spread around the world and have become popular among users in most countries (including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.).
History of social networks
To fully answer the question "social networks - what is it?", you need to familiarize yourself with the history of their appearance. Initially, to ensure communication between network users, such services as Usenet, ARPANET, mailing lists and bulletin boards were introduced. Many prototype social networking features have been present in online services such as America Online, Prodigy, CompuServe, ChatNet, and a few others.
More modern-day services began to appear on the World Wide Web as generic online communities like Theglobe.com (in 1995), Geocities (1994), and Tripod.com (1995). Many of these early resources focused on bringing people together and communicating through chats, as well as encouraging users to share information and ideas through personal pages, providing easy-to-use publishing tools and free or low-cost hosting. Subsequently, social networks appeared on the Internet, using a different approach, connecting people through Email and messaging. The first such service in the world was Classmates.com.
Most up-to-date services
In the late 1990s, user profiles became the centerpiece of social media, allowing users to build "friend" lists and search for other users with similar interests. New operating principles for these services were developed in the late 1990s, and sites began to try to promote a better user experience. This new generation of social media flourished with the advent of SixDegrees.com in 1997, followed by Makeoutclub (2000) and Friendster (2002), and soon became part of the Internet mainstream. Friendster was followed by MySpace and LinkedIn (a social network for workers). Facebook was launched in 2004. It soon became the largest social network in the world.
What services are the most popular today?
Facebook is a social networking site headquartered in the US, in Menlo Park, California. As mentioned above, this website was launched in 2004 along with its college dorm roommates. The founders initially limited the site's visitors to Harvard students only, but later made it available to many other students. Since 2006, this project has become available to everyone who has reached the age of 13.
After registering on the site, users can create a profile, add other users as friends, exchange messages, make status updates, add photos, share videos, and receive notifications from friends. In addition, users can join interest groups and categorize their friends in lists, such as "People from work" or "Close friends". Facebook has over 1.44 billion active users as of March 2015.
Blogs and business website
Twitter is an online service that allows users to send and read short 140-character messages called tweets. Registered users can read and write tweets, unregistered users can only read. Users access Twitter through the website interface, SMS, or the Twitter app. mobile device. Office of Twitter Inc. based in San Francisco and has over 25 branches worldwide. In May 2015, Twitter had over 500 million users, of which over 302 million are active.
LinkedIn is a business-oriented service. In other words, employees and employers. Founded in December 2002 and launched on May 5, 2003, it is mainly used for professional communication. In 2006, LinkedIn was expanded to 20 million members. As of June 2013, LinkedIn reported over 259 million users in over 200 countries.
The most famous social networks in Russia
VK (originally VKontakte) is Russia's largest social network. It is available in several languages, but is especially popular among Russian-speaking users, in particular, in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Like other similar social and entertainment networks, VKontakte allows users to send messages to each other publicly or privately, create groups, pages and events, share images, audio and video, and play browser-based games. As of November 2014, the service had 280 million accounts.
Odnoklassniki (or OK.ru) is a site for finding former classmates and old friends. It is popular in Russia and other former Soviet republics. The site currently claims to have over 200 million registered users and 45 million daily unique visitors. This resource has been around for eight years.
Livejournal
Forecast and development
This article gave a detailed answer to the following question: "Social networks - what is it?". Currently, there are new and new resources similar to those listed above, but every year it is more and more difficult for them to withstand competition and become leaders.