The best social network. The benefits and harms of social networks

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 of age, 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 in 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 a Google account. 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 its 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 use Linkedin to look for a job, 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 has recently become 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 the extremely popular project called Twitter. This social network, along with Facebook and Instagram, has long become an integral attribute of the “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 in abstruse terms). 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.

Currently, 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 is an excellent tool for receiving responses, 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 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, firstly, to those who understand Chinese, and secondly, to 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, then only indirectly; their main tasks are other areas: blogging, video hosting, etc. This means they deserve a place in a separate thematic selection.

This week, the founder of the world's largest social network Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, is coming to Russia, who has already hinted about his desire to lure the best specialists from the Russian IT industry to the United States.

Indeed, working on a social network looks tempting, because such projects can easily be considered one of the most popular areas in the development of Internet technologies. Hundreds of millions, what’s up, billions of people are eager to exchange useful information every day, arrange meetings, and share fresh impressions from their lives. The world of social networks is an entire industry where the fittest survive. Where should you leave your mark, and which projects will never shine before the public?

Facebook

Of course, the social network Facebook has every right to be considered the most widespread today throughout the globe. Moreover, the number of users continues to grow steadily, reaching the volume of all mobile device users in the world. At the same time, FB itself is improving: new tools are appearing, network operation is speeding up, and integration with smartphones is developing.

Foursquare

The Foursquare project is a social network that offers the ability to register users in specific locations on the map. Today, about 20 million people participate in it, each of whom strives to become a check-in champion. The practical benefit of the network is this: you can track the movements of friends and acquaintances on the map and intersect with them if possible.

Google+

The Google+ social network allows you to keep in touch through your existing Google account. In other words, if you have your own email, you can easily create a page on Google+. The project is developing extremely rapidly, and its extensive capabilities are in many ways not inferior to Facebook. By the way, quite recently it became possible to video chat with several people, up to ten friends.

Imo.im

If the user's main goal is to exchange messages with friends, then Imo.im is a great choice. This application offers instant messaging capabilities and can be easily installed on most smartphones. Thanks to Imo.im, the user can freely send text messages to friends from different social networks.

Instagram

The social network Instagram, purchased by Facebook, although no longer formally an independent project, looks quite independent. Using Instagram, you can quickly post photos processed with all kinds of filters. This application is easy to use, convenient and widely popular.

LinkedIn

A social network of professionals - this is exactly how LinkedIn positions itself. Using this program, you can easily find your work colleagues, make appointments, and exchange experiences. Over 175 million people use LinkedIn worldwide.

Twitter App/TweetDeck

Twitter today remains the leader in the field of short messages. He is extremely popular among all groups of the population, including show business stars and top politicians. Twitter allows you to upload and share photos, videos, and links to websites.

Path

Pinterest

The Pinterest app allows you to share photos with friends and acquaintances. You can find things online that are of interest to the user, and then post them on your page. Other users can repost these items and also comment on the tagged items. Most recently, Pinterest released applications for the Android mobile operating system, as well as for the iPad tablet.

Tumblr

According to this indicator, VKontakte is significantly ahead of other social networks.

The main audience of the resource is young people, who use the ability to download, view and listen to video and audio recordings from almost any user on the page. The service is also characterized by a large number of various communities and celebrity pages, which contain the latest news and publications.

Through these communities, users can create all kinds of interest groups, read about the latest events, exchange photos and invite each other to various events.

"Classmates"

Odnoklassniki currently ranks second on the Russian Internet. This social network became one of the very first in Russia and is still very popular.

The resource is popular among middle-aged people.

A special feature of Odnoklassniki is that it has its own currency, with which you can buy gifts, change interface elements and activate new account management functions. The drop in Odnoklassniki traffic was caused by the growing popularity of VKontakte. However, the social network managed to regain part of the audience thanks to the transfer of the service to Mail.ru, a large company that provides a large number of services for Internet users.

Other social networks

Facebook is a social network that became the first in the world and is the most popular today among users all over the world. However, it has not become so widespread in Russia due to restrictions on downloading files and sharing videos that the resource imposes. Also, some users note that Facebook has a somewhat overloaded interface, which makes it difficult to get used to and use the network's functions.

Other popular social networks are such world-famous sites as Twitter, which allows you to share short entries and incidents in life with other users, Livejournal, which allows you to maintain a fully functional blog, and Google+, which at the moment has not yet gained widespread popularity among users in the world. Russia.

Social networks are the best way to keep in touch with your friends and/or relatives, look for new acquaintances, and share music, films, and photos. It's the end of two thousand sixteen and now there are several hundred platforms designed for building social relationships on the Internet. In this article we will look at some of the most popular ones in the world.

5 Tumblr

4 VKontakte

3 Twitter

2 Google+

1 Facebook

As of April 2017, Facebook remains the most popular social network in the world. Its monthly audience is almost 2 billion people (to be more precise - 1968 million).

The second place in the ranking in popularity is occupied by the WhatsApp instant messaging system - 1200 million. The third position is occupied by the well-known video hosting YouTube - 1000 million. However, the same results were demonstrated by Facebook Messenger (an application for instant messaging and video exchange from Facebook) - 1000 million .

Next in popularity are social networks: WeChat (a mobile communication system for sending text and voice messages) - 889 million, QQ (the most popular Chinese instant messaging service) - 868 million, Instagram (an application for sharing photos and videos) - 600 million ., QZone (China's largest social network) - 595 million, Tumblr (microblog service) - 550 million, Twitter (microblog service) - 319 million. This is what the top ten most popular social networks in the world look like in 2017.

But in addition to these, there are other social networking sites and applications in the world: Sina Weibo - 313 million, Baidu Tieba - 300 million, Snapchat - 300 million, Skype - 300 million, Viber - 260 million, LINE - 220 million ., Pinterest - 150 million, YY - 122 million, LinkedIn - 106 million, Telegram - 100 million, BBM - 100 million, VKontakte - 95, Kakaotalk - 49 million.

These are the most popular social networks in the world in 2017. As you can see, among the popular systems there are not only traditional social networks, but also various applications and messaging services. The largest of them still have American “registration”. But recently, Chinese social networks have become increasingly popular. This is facilitated by the continued penetration of the Internet in the most populous country in the world. Therefore, it is likely that in a few years a similar rating will look somewhat different.

Photo: Screenshot of the Facebook home page

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