What social networks are popular? The largest social networks in Russia and the world - an overview of the most prominent representatives

Today, social networks are so firmly rooted in our lives that the composition of the top five most popular social platforms remains virtually unchanged from year to year. However, the penetration and use of these social networks varies depending on geography and demographic factors. Understanding these differences plays a big role when targeting specific audiences. When comparing the most popular social networks, it is important to pay attention not to the number of registered accounts, but to the number of active users. From the review you will learn which social networks are growing faster than others, and which are currently in decline.

The most popular social platforms

The chart, produced by analytics agency Statista, gives a clear picture of the number of active users (in millions) on the world's most popular social networks. Topping the list is Facebook. This can hardly surprise anyone. Facebook holds the majority of the market share with over 2 billion active users. In January 2017, the giant's closest competitor was WhatsApp, which is also owned by Facebook. Then he was in second place. Today, YouTube is in second place with 1.5 billion active users. Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp take third and fourth place respectively.

They are followed by platforms, the majority of whose audience is located in the Asia-Pacific region. These are QQ, WeChat and Qzone (with more than 600 million active users). This shows that there are a number of popular social media in APAC countries. After them, we see a cluster of platforms popular mainly in the West - Tumblr, Instagram and Twitter.

What about in Russia?

In Russia, the penetration of social networks is estimated at 47%; 67.8 million Russians have accounts on them. According to Statista, YouTube is used most actively in the Russian Federation (63% of respondents), VKontakte takes second place - 61%. Global leader Facebook is only in fourth place with an indicator of 35%. Skype and WhatsApp dominate among instant messengers (38% each).

Social networks that are growing faster than others

Marketers usually don’t spend much time on SMM. Which social network should you concentrate your efforts on? Twitter, which amassed 313 million users between 2010 and 2017, has seen the slowest growth compared to its biggest competitors Facebook, WhatsApp and China's WeChat. Founded in 2013, Instagram had already surpassed Twitter in terms of audience size by 2014.

A new study from Statista shows that Twitter fell far behind its peers in 2017. It saw the lowest growth in monthly active audience, with only 23 million from Q3 2015 to Q3 2017. Facebook, meanwhile, grew by 461 million.

How users interact with brands on social networks

Knowing how to behave and what posts to make on social media is also important, since it shapes the image of your brand and, as a result, encourages users to buy your products or, conversely, unsubscribe from your groups. Social media is increasingly being used as customer engagement platforms where customers, existing and potential, want answers to their questions in real time. A chart taken from a Sprout Social report shows that 48% of users can be persuaded to buy by quickly answering questions in a group. 46% respond positively to promotions, and 42% may choose a brand's product if its page provides educational content. 27% of surveyed users admitted that they would be willing to make a purchase if they were shown materials that are usually left behind the scenes.

Half of respondents to a Sprout Social survey said they would unfollow a brand's community if I posted content that they found offensive, and 27% said they would mark a brand and its page as spam and block it. This is why it is so important to reach and engage your potential customers by publishing relevant and interesting content that resonates with your target audience.

Social networks with the most active audience

An important factor that influences how much time we should devote to SMM on a particular social network is the level of audience engagement. Here again, Facebook dominates, and also has the highest engagement over time, according to data from analytics firm comScore's study of a panel of US consumers.

Facebook's success is amazing. In addition to the social network itself occupying the top spot, other corporate-owned platforms also took second and third place. Facebook Messenger has a 47% penetration rate, with Instagram right behind it.

From the latest data from Pew Internet, shown in the chart below, we can see that Facebook also leads in the number of active audiences per day. 76% of users log into the social network every day, on Instagram this figure is 51%. Only 42% of Twitter users check it daily, which is almost half that of Facebook.

The average daily duration of use of social networks in the United States is 2 hours 1 minute; in Russia, users spend a little more time on social platforms - 2 hours 19 minutes.

Engagement rates in different social networks

Marketing analytics company TrackMaven analyzed 51 million posts from companies across 130 industries to find out which social networks have the highest engagement rates. The results showed that the absolute leader in terms of engagement per 1000 subscribers is Instagram. This is so much higher than other social networks that we had to create a separate chart to illustrate the difference between Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

As you can see from the second graph, Facebook is significantly ahead of Twitter and LinkedIn. The reason for this is largely due to the fact that Twitter posts more because there is no algorithm to show content to only a small portion of the audience. Because of this, brands have to flood their feeds with posts to break through the information noise. This, in turn, reduces the response rate to publications. Below is the average daily number of posts per account on three social networks.

General statistics on social media usage around the world

Every year, WeAreSocial updates its comprehensive Global Digital Report, which compiles actionable data on social media around the world. From it you can find out how differently social platforms are used in different parts of the world. It is surprising that Western countries are seriously lagging behind in the rate of penetration of social networks.

Below are the main conclusions of the studies.

• The number of Internet users in 2018 reached 4.021 billion people, which is 7 percent more than a year ago.
• The audience of social networks in 2018 totals 3.196 billion people - 13% higher than last year’s figure.
• The number of mobile phone users is 5.135 billion people, which means an increase of 4% compared to last year.

The numbers are growing rapidly, especially for active users of social networks on mobile devices - the penetration rate is 39%, which is 5% more than in 2017.

If we talk about the structure of web traffic depending on the type of device, then the most traffic is generated by mobile users (52%, which is 4% higher than last year). Only 43% of all web pages are visited from desktops, which is 3% lower than last year.

Northern, Western and Southern Europe, as well as North America, boast the highest levels of Internet penetration, with 74%–94% of the total population using the World Wide Web. In Russia, 110 million people use the Internet—76% of the total population.

The growth in the global audience of social networks since January 2017 was 13%. The fastest growth in the number of users is observed in Saudi Arabia. Since January 2017, their number has increased by 32%, the global average is 17%. Other countries with the highest growth rates include India, Indonesia and Ghana. The reason for the jump was the development of technology, which made it easier for the population to access social platforms. Social networks grew the slowest in the UAE, South Korea and the UK -<5%. В России пользователей соцсетей стало на 8 826 000 человек больше (+15% к прошлогоднему значению).

Since Facebook has the largest share of users, it would be useful to know how the content you post will perform on the social network and what features to use to increase its reach. According to social network statistics, the average reach of a publication is 10.7%, with organic posts having 8% (organic reach in Russia is 11.3%), and for paid posts this value is 26.8% (27.4% in Russia) . Organic and paid posts on Facebook have enormous potential. It is important to target publications correctly in order to receive quality leads.

You can get a more complete picture of the state of the global digital market in 2018 by studying our review of the Internet 2017-2018 in the world and in Russia: statistics and trends, which we prepared based on the Global Digital 2018 study.

Popularity of social networks by country

The graph below from the GlobalWebIndex report, based on a survey of Internet users, perfectly reflects the popularity of various social networks by country. Indonesia, the Philippines, Mexico, India and Brazil are among the top ten most active audiences on each social network, significantly ahead of the US, UK and European countries.

Of the four social networks presented (Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Google+), Russians are the most active users of the video service. Twitter and Google+ are used relatively often by only 20% of our compatriots, and Facebook is regularly viewed by just over 40%.

Demographic statistics of social media use

As can be seen from the graph, different age groups have a similar pattern of social media use. This suggests that social networks have reached a stage of maturity where they can reach all demographic groups, regardless of age and gender. The exceptions are Instagram and Tumblr, which have younger audiences.

Strategies for interacting with social media audiences

According to The State of Social 2018 study, 96% of brands have a presence on Facebook.

Moreover, only half of the respondents have a documented SMM strategy. Large businesses are a little more responsible about this issue than small companies (60% said they have such a document).

When it comes to the types of content brands publish, images, links, and text lead the way. Even though video posts tend to get the most engagement, video content only comes in fourth. This is primarily due to the complexity of creating such materials.

At the end of 2017, Smart Insights, together with Clutch, conducted a survey among business representatives, in which they asked which social networks were of the greatest value to them. It turned out that among B2C companies Facebook is considered the most effective (93% of respondents), and most B2B companies prefer LinkedIn (93%).

The Value of Social Media for Brands in 2018

1. If you think that your target audience is not on social networks, you are mistaken.

Through social networks you can reach any audience, regardless of gender, age, social status. 98% of online consumers are registered on social networks, a fairly large part of them are adults 55-64 years old.

1. People devote a third of their time on the Internet to social networks.

The average user spends 2 hours 15 minutes a day scrolling through their feed and communicating on social platforms, and young people aged 16-24 spend almost three hours. If you do not consider SMM as a channel for attracting customers, then you are voluntarily giving up the attention of your target audience to your competitors.

1. Half of all social media users follow brand pages.

4 out of 10 internet users follow their favorite companies on social media, and a quarter follow brands when planning to buy something. People respond positively to such content, so an active presence on social media is of great value to companies.

1. Social networks are the main source of information for consumers.

People aged 16-24 prefer to look for information about brands on social networks rather than on search engines. A quarter of users in this age group admit that a large number of likes on a brand’s page can persuade them to make a purchase. In the group of 35-44 years old, 20% of respondents said the same. Social commerce can be considered one of the main channels for generating profit, which means it is important to diversify your efforts and not rely only on advertising.

1. Watching videos is a favorite pastime on social media.

Facebook is the largest social network in terms of number of users, but YouTube takes first place in terms of traffic and the reason is because of the video. Video posts receive the most active response, and that is why leading brands constantly publish videos on their pages.

The following materials were used in preparing the article:

1. Global Social Media Research Summary 2018 by Smart Insights
2. The State of Social 2018 report by Social Media Week
3. The Biggest Social Media Trends Shaping 2018 article published on the GlobalWebIndex blog
4. Social Networks Study: How social networks were used in 2017 by analytical agency Metricool
5. Global Digital 2018 report package compiled by WeAreSocial analytical agency

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It's no secret that social networks are visited by millions of Internet users every day. They communicate with each other, download, view videos, pictures, photos, etc. The lion's share of activity on the World Wide Web falls on these sites called social networks. But which one is the most popular and visited? Below is a list of the ten most popular social networks. networks in the world.

Vine

Vine is a service and mobile application that allows you to create and publish short videos no more than 6 seconds long. The service was founded in June 2012 by Dom Hofmann, Rus Yusupov and Colin Kroll. However, before its official launch, Vine was acquired by Twitter, Inc. for $30 million. Vine debuted as a free application on January 24, 2013 and was initially available only for devices running iOS. However, it later became available for Android and Windows Phone. On April 9, 2013, the application became the most downloaded free application in the App Store. At the end of June, it already had 13 million users, and about 1 million new videos began appearing on the service every day. Vine has about 42,000,000 visitors every month.

Flickr

In ninth place in the ranking of the most popular social networks. networks there is Flickr - a site for posting photos and videos, as well as viewing, discussing, rating and archiving them. Allows you to communicate and create thematic groups. The service was launched on February 10, 2004, and in March 2005 it was bought by the American company Yahoo! As of March 2013, Flickr had 87 million registered users and more than 3.5 million new images uploaded per day.

VKontakte

VKontakte is a social network based in St. Petersburg and owned by Mail.Ru Group. The project was launched on October 10, 2006. The site is available in several languages, but it is especially popular among the Russian-speaking audience. Like other social networks, VKontakte allows its users to exchange messages, images, audio, video, create groups, public pages and events, and also play Flash games using a browser. As of January 2015, the site's audience is about 71 million people per day.

Instagram

Instagram is a free application for sharing photos and short videos with the ability to distribute them through its service to other social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Flickr. Instagram was created by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger and launched in October 2010 as a free mobile app. The service quickly gained popularity. As of April 2012, it had 100 million active users worldwide, and 300 million as of December 2014. In April 2012, Instagram was acquired by Facebook for approximately $1 billion.

Tumblr

The sixth place in the list of the most popular social networks in the world is occupied by Tumblr, a microblogging service that allows users to publish text messages, images, videos, links and audio recordings to their tumblr blog. The site was founded in 2007 by David Karp. May 18, 2013 Yahoo! acquired the service for $1.1 billion. As of 2015, about 220 million blogs are registered on Tumblr.

Google+

Google+ is a social network developed and owned by Google Inc. The service was launched on June 28, 2011. And two weeks after its launch on July 14, 2011, Google announced that the Google+ social network has more than 10 million users. As of September 17, 2012, the site's audience is 400 million users, and the active monthly audience has reached 135 million people.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a social network designed for finding and establishing business contacts. It was founded in December 2002 by Reed Hoffman and launched on May 5, 2003. The site is available in 24 languages ​​and has over 380 million registered users representing 150 different business sectors from 200 countries. About half of the users are residents of the United States, 25 million are from Europe.

Pinterest

Third place in the list of the ten most popular social networks in the world is occupied by Pinterest - social. network, photo hosting, allowing users to add and share images. The site was founded by Ben Silberman, Paul Sayer and Evan Sharp in March 2010. As of February 2013, Pinterest has 48.7 million users worldwide.

Twitter - social a network and microblock service that allows users to create and exchange public short messages of up to 140 characters. Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, Biz Stone and launched in July 2006. The service quickly gained popularity around the world, with more than 100 million users posting approximately 340 million tweets per day in 2012. As of May 2015, Twitter has more than 500 million registered users, of which more than 302 million are active. As of 2012, the company employs more than 900 employees.

Facebook

Facebook is the largest and most popular social network in the world and is available in more than 70 languages. Owned by Facebook, Inc., headquartered in Silicon Valley, California, USA. The site was launched on February 4, 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg and his Harvard University roommates and classmates Dustin Moskowitz, Eduardo Saverin and Chris Hughes. As of July 2014, Facebook's audience amounted to 1.32 billion users, and the average daily audience of social networks. The network has 968 million users (approximately every 7th person on the planet is registered on Facebook). The site is valued at approximately $100 billion, making Mark Zuckerberg, at 23, the youngest billionaire on the planet.

Share on social media networks

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A social network is a site through which you can communicate with other users of the resource. On such Internet platforms, you can publish and view information from other registered participants: music, photos and videos, documents, articles, and write comments.

The growing popularity of such portals encourages them to be used not only for personal purposes. Promotion and support of companies, sales of goods and services are the goals of strategies in social marketing (SMM). The key to success is choosing the right network among the many available. Otherwise, spending time and effort searching for the target audience will be useless. What social networks exist on the Internet, how do they differ from each other, and how have they earned popularity among their users? Let's take a closer look.

History of social networks

The first prototype of a communication service was described back in 1837 in a science fiction novel by Vladimir Odoevsky. The theory and principles of creation are set out in the works of mathematicians of the 1950-1960s. In 1954 the term itself appeared. Social networks became a reality with the widespread development of the Internet.

The first similarity was the resource Classmates.com in 1995, where you could find students from different educational institutions. The now more familiar look and functions appeared in the SixDegrees.com project in 1997. Registration, creating a personal profile, finding friends, communicating with them were innovative features for that time.

The now familiar social networks began to appear en masse in 2003. LinkedIn and Facebook are starting to work. Since 2006, Odnoklassniki and VKontakte have been created in Russia. Since then, the number of resources has been constantly increasing, new functions have appeared in them, which are not only convenient for users for entertainment and communication, but also for doing business.

What social networks are there on the Internet?

Based on functionality and opportunities for users, you can segment what types of social networks there are. To classify by content type, the following types of social networks can be distinguished:

Functionality

There are a lot of options for what to do on communication resources, but we can highlight the main ones. Services allow you to:

• Communicate with colleagues, friends, like-minded people and many people who are interesting according to one or another criteria. You can join interest groups, meet for specific purposes, and share personal information with all or selected visitors to the resource.
• Search – people (according to certain parameters, for example, educational institutions, places of work, city of residence), companies and goods that are offered for sale through communication sites.
• Share news - media outlets and news agencies have their own pages. Information about events can be added by all participants.
• Relaxing - this is facilitated by a lot of varied content posted on the portal for a fee or free of charge: films, games, music.
• Learn - educational programs, lessons, materials and advice from other people allow you to obtain useful information in different areas of life. Learn to cook, master the grammatical subtleties of another language, attend master classes on making useful items with your own hands, hone your skills in using technology or computer programs - all this will be found in abundance.
• Store files and share them.
• Find a job or employee - professional networks are created to exchange experiences, develop business connections, and search for vacancies with employers.
• Share documents – working on one task has never been so easy! Borders, time differences, and other factors are offset by general access, the ability to comment and edit materials.

Reasons for popularity

The huge interest in communication sites that has been observed in recent years is understandable. Among the main reasons:

Regardless of what kind of social networks there are, users are increasingly aware of the hidden threats from their use. And we’re not just talking about dependence on a computer or other gadget, although the time spent is valuable. Much worse, and sometimes even more dangerous, is the fact that personal life circumstances become known to a wide circle of people. The intentions of the latter are not always honest. Here are just a few examples:

• Apartment thieves can find out when the owners of an apartment or house have been away for a long time by looking at vivid vacation photos.
• For the abduction of a child, information about the parents will play into the hands, which will convince the child to believe that the person really knows mom or dad.
• It is easier to choose a potential victim after making sure of the person’s financial viability using information from open sources.
• Groups are being created for teenagers to encourage suicide.

It is becoming a common practice when, before hiring, HR employees look through the pages of a potential candidate, wanting to learn more about him, his habits and social circle. Explicit photos, aggressive posts, support for extremism and other aspects can play a negative role both in employment and in your career.

Leaks of personal data, manipulation of audiences, hacking of accounts with subsequent use are becoming more and more common. And even the giants in this area are not immune from such troubles. All this makes you think about what to publish on resources and who to give access to view, and teaches you to observe the minimum requirements of caution on the Internet.

Trends and prospects

A 2017 report from We Are Social and Hootsuite shows compelling user growth on social media. With a total population of about 7.5 billion people, over 3 billion are registered in one application or another. 1 million new registrations occur every day. Moreover, the number of visits to sites from mobile devices is growing - almost 90% of visitors use smartphones and tablets, rather than desktop computers.

At the same time, if a couple of years ago on communication platforms it was possible to quickly find out news and events from the lives of real people, now the situation is radically changing. There are more and more advertisements, posts about “cats”, motivators and other general information. And this is no longer such a close, intimate and familiar circle of friends. The level of trust drops, which means it becomes more difficult to sell something.

More and more startups are emerging, which, although they will not displace Facebook from its leadership position in the near future, will attract part of the audience. Planning a marketing campaign requires more attention and with a preliminary analysis of the selected resource, product and target audience.

Forecasts are that active growth will slow down and the social media boom will subside. You shouldn’t give up your usual web portal in favor of only a page on Facebook, VK or another network. The familiar Internet and websites will remain on par with social networks.

What are the most popular social networks

Dozens of services work. Some of them are loved in several countries or even around the world, others unite citizens of one country and are not widely used outside its borders. An overview of what social networks there are and a list of popular world services is provided below.

Facebook

The unconditional first place is ensured by over 2.2 billion accounts in the world. Facebook has been in operation since 2004, created by Mark Zuckerberg. A simple and free communication service that allows you to:

• Register your own page where you post photos and other materials.
• Find other users, add them as friends, find out their news.
• Share information from the network or from other participants, upload videos and photographs.
• Create groups (open or closed).
• Find out the news.
• Comment and rate publications.

Facebook Inc. (the owner of the service) is constantly expanding its capabilities. Hyperlocal advertising (within a certain radius from the advertiser), Snapchat (disappearing stories), GIF animation for commenting, saving interesting materials, messenger and other functions confidently retain the interest of users.

YouTube

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

Main features:

• Post your videos for viewing.
• Various formats are supported: panoramas, HD, Full HD, MPEG-4 AVC and others.
• Edit videos from the browser using editor programs (add titles, audio tracks, images, transitions).
• Comment, rate other people's videos or comments.
• Create group chats.
• Maintain a video channel.

The company is trying to control the content of the resource, periodically deleting videos that violate copyright and are recognized as extremist. In some countries, the resource is blocked for publishing materials objectionable to the authorities.

whatsapp

Mobile messenger for more than 1.2 billion people. WhatsApp was created in 2009, and since 2014 it has been owned by Facebook Inc. It is considered a social network due to its functions:

• Correspondence between participants.
• Creation of groups, communication in group chat mode.
• Share videos, music and other content.
• Ability to assign statuses to an account.

These features make it possible to classify WhatsApp as a social network, with one peculiarity - it works based on the phone book. To communicate, you need the phone number of the interlocutor. Whether this limits it or, on the contrary, allows you to maintain privacy – there are different opinions. One of the advantages is that a large number of versions have been developed that support different operating systems, including Symbian (which is rare).

Instagram

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

• Blogging.
• Photo processing - effects, frames, special shooting modes, collages.
• Creating your profile and publication feed.
• View friends, rate and comment on their posts.
• Cross-posting – simultaneous posting of material on several social networks.
• Search for the necessary information using hashtags (special marks).

Instagram is especially popular among young people under 25 years of age and is actively developing. This network is one of the most promising for business, product promotion, brand promotion and services.

WeChat

The leader among Chinese services is WeChat, a micromessaging application. Considering the ban in the country of world favorites Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, Chinese users communicate with their developments. WeChat is not just an application; it has much more options. Basic:

• Personal communication, video calls, voice messages.
• Group chats for up to 500 people.
• Blogs, reviews, testimonials, “Moments”.
• Pay bills and purchases.
• Dating (including geographic search).
• Photo editing, text translation.
• One account on different devices at the same time.

And although there are a number of restrictions (for example, one publication per day), the application is relatively new (working since 2011), the number of accounts is approaching a billion. WeChat is being promoted outside of China (Russia, India and other countries).

Qzone

A Chinese social network with the following capabilities: blogging, watching videos, listening to music, communicating, making purchases. Basic options are free, additional options are available with a premium subscription. Since its founding (2005), it has attracted 600 million participants. Available in English and Chinese.

Sina Weibo

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

Google+

Google's own development. The operating principle is based on the concept of circles. The user creates them himself, regulating who and what information will be available. Main features: sharing photos, videos, links, games, group chats, support for mobile devices, video conferencing. Launched in 2011, there are more than 135 million users. The profile is associated with an email from Google and affects search results. The service is considered one of the most promising; the number of accounts is expected to grow steadily in the coming years.

LinkedIn

Network for professionals. More than 500 million users from 200 countries communicate on its pages. The main emphasis is not on entertainment, humor, news and other content familiar to other services, but on a resume, portfolio, list of skills (with confirmation from real people), vacancies. Asking colleagues for advice, discussing professional issues, looking for a job or employees, getting recommendations are the tasks of LinkedIn. The project was launched in 2003 and purchased by Microsoft in 2016.

Twitter

Started working in the USA in 2006. Features: blogging with short messages (maximum 280 characters). An interesting option is “Moments” (plots with development). You can learn about high-profile, popular news without subscribing to other users. People famous in a variety of fields from show business to sports maintain their microblogs on Twitter. The total number of accounts exceeds 330 million.

What social networks are there in Russia?

In Russia, the popularity of online communication services does not lag behind global indicators. Only they have their favorites - Russian VKontakte and Odnoklassniki. Knowing your leaders in this industry is a must for anyone who promotes their products or brand through SMM.

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.

VKontakte

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

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

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

Classmates

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

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

The Odnoklassniki project works in both full and mobile versions, which is convenient and saves network traffic and time for loading the page.

List of social networks

A clear answer to the question “which social networks are better?” No. Each of them has a number of advantages and is popular in a certain environment. Country, age, range of interests influence preferences. We have decided on the main services, but the choice is much wider. Below is a list that includes the most promoted projects.
Social networks of the world:

• For communication: Facebook, VKontakte, MirTesen, Pinterest, Moy [email protected], Odnoklassniki, xbeee.com, Pikabu, ASKfm, Cloob, Instagram, Google+, Myspace, RetroShare, Vine.
• Thematic: Promise Bank, Diary, On the Wall, Habbo, Jeep-er Club, Auto Club AutoPCL, NumPlate, Last.fm, Olvet Community Network, MyAnimeList, Untappd, CHIF.SU, Wakoopa, Vsoyue, ktoprochto.ru, Nekto.me , Drawi.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.

Social networks began to gain popularity in 1995, when the Classmates.ru website appeared on the Internet platform. Users liked this project, and like mushroom rain, more and more new projects rained down. The main “BOOM” came in 2003-2004, when social networks such as Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, etc. were invented. Most people have difficulty imagining their life without social networks. With the help of such uncomplicated and simple applications, people have endless possibilities. Every day more than a million photos are posted on social networks, more than a billion messages are written, videos are shot, blogs and discussions are conducted. Sometimes it seems that a social network is your whole life. Considering the fact that users voluntarily publish their data on social networks, marketers can easily determine the market for a particular product, but some unscrupulous people can use this information for their own evil purposes. Also in history there are known cases of addiction to social networks, and cases of mental disorders from dissatisfaction with feelings of self-demand.

Rating of social networks for 2016

10th place. MySpace

The site was created in 2003 by Chris DeWolfe. About 42 million people use this social network.

9th place. VKontakte

Pavel Durov created this social network with the goal that students and graduates could communicate with each other. But later the site was recognized as “The fastest and most convenient.” There are about 70 million registered users on this social network.

8th place. Classmates

This site is visited by about 44 million users per day, and in total approximately 100 million are registered. It was created by Albert Popkov, and initially it was just a hobby of the creator, but when the site began to gain popularity, it became a job.

7th place. Instagram

This social network is very popular with many Internet users. Every day millions of photos and “selfies” from all over the world are poured into it. This site was created by a couple, Mike Krieger and Kevin Sistre. The number of registered people is about 110 million people.

6th place. Tumblr

This network was invented in 2007 by David Karp. The site is visited monthly by more than 110 million people. Unfortunately, this site is not very popular among the countries of the post-Soviet space.

5th place. Google Plus

4th place. Linkedin

The network was created in 2002 and is very popular in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Its creator is Rudy Hoffman, and the site’s traffic is about 225 million people per month.

3rd place. Pinterest

This network began to gain popularity back in 2010, when it was invented by Ben Silberman. At the moment, the Pinerest social network has about 250 million visitors per month.

2nd place. Twitter

Despite the fact that this social network is considered quite young, created in 2006, it proudly ranks second, as the site’s monthly traffic reaches 350 million people. Biz Stone and Jack Dorsey contributed to her invention. The purpose of creating this network was to host news and activities.

1st place. Facebook

Today, more than 900 million people are registered on the social network Facebook. She is rightfully in first place. The web was invented by Mark Zuckerberg in 2004. Initially, the site was available only to Harvard students, which included Mark himself. Since 2006, access to the network has been opened to the whole world.

In Russia, the rating of social networks does not coincide slightly with the global one. The reason is that Russians have their own vision of this world, and individual ways of perceiving the world around them. The population of the Russian Federation prefers the VKontakte website to the Pinterest website, the Odnoklassniki website to the Tumblr website. This is what the rating of social networks in Russia looks like in 2016:

1. Tumblr
2. Pinterest
3. Google Plus+
4. MySpace
5. Linkedin
6. Classmates
7. Instagram
8. Twitter
9. Facebook

Social networks have become a part of our lives. Many of us can't imagine our day without logging onto our favorite network, checking the news, or exchanging messages. Social networks are used at work and with friends. The boundaries of the virtual and real worlds have blurred. We don't dial phone numbers anymore, we text, we don't compliment each other, we like and comment on photos.

There are many networks today, but what is the largest social network in the world? To figure this out, we compiled a small rating of the largest popular social networks and compared the number of users registered on them.

Facebook. The largest social network in the world. Today there are 1 billion 200 million registered users. It was founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg. Registration is free and open to all persons over 13 years of age. There is a Russian version. Initially, the network was conceived for internal communication among students at Harvard University, but then it expanded first to other universities, and then throughout the world. This social network broke all traffic records, and Mark Zuckerberg became the youngest billionaire in history. He was only 23 years old.

MySpace. The largest and most popular social network among Americans. It has not yet received such development in Russia. It was opened in 2003 and has a Russian version. Number of users 25 million. For a long time it was the leader in America, but the emergence of Facebook shook its position. In 2011, Justin Timberlake launched an advertising campaign to restore MySpace to its former popularity. The number of users began to grow slowly.