Social media is a growing phenomenon for everyone of all genders and ages. When the internet first launched way back when, it wasn’t used like it is today.
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Now, social media is used the most every single day. It’s something that has helped many people grow due to information being available within just a few clicks of a virtual button. Friendships across the Atlantic and Pacific have been created and have been able to continue due to all kinds of texting and video messaging apps and social networking websites.
If you need to know about something that happened in history or science, you can Google it. If you need to know what’s going on with your friend that lives five thousand miles away, you can send them a message on Facebook. If you need to organize your life, there’s something on the internet for that.
If you need a job, you’re more than likely going to find one on a website. So many YouTubers, bloggers, and your everyday businessmen and businesswomen have found jobs thanks to social media. It’s all about making the right connections.
In this article, we’re going to talk about eight of the biggest social media websites and apps with over one billion users at this time.
8. Facebook Messenger
On August 9, 2011, Zuckerberg created Facebook Messenger to go with the original app, Facebook. It was meant to make it easier to message people on the go even though you could still use it on the website.
The only real downside that people thought of when it came to this app was when it was removed from Facebook itself on March 5, 2014 and people were then forced to download the app onto their phone if they wanted to continue messaging their friends on Facebook while mobile.
7. LinkedIn
LinkedIn is different from most social media. While the other ones are more for personal relationships, this one is more for business. It can be used to find jobs to apply for and to find people in need of jobs to hire.
The website is available in twenty four languages including but not limited to English, Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Korean, and more. As of September 2015, there are 396 million registered accounts and a hundred million active users.
6. Pinterest
With only over a million registered users and over a million active users as of September 2015, Pinterest isn’t as popular as the other social media networks.
“ Mostly popular with older women ”
Pinterest is essentially a website and mobile app just for sharing pictures of all the things you can imagine. There are pictures that range from cars, to fashion, to drinks, to animals and other various things.
Demographically, the website is mostly popular with older women around the world. Although, in the UK, it is mostly used by younger men.
It’s used by many women for fashion, makeup, hair, and home decor inspiration. Many people post different kinds of DIY projects to share to their audience. Pinterested was launched March 2010 and is based in San Francisco, California.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QkMOdW0Kyc
5. Snapchat
Snapchat is one of the newest and currently most popular social media apps today. There are over a hundred million registered accounts and over a hundred million of those accounts are currently active. The app was created by three students at Stanford University.
Founded four years ago in September 2011, Snapchat is a simple video messaging app that lets people send pictures and video clips which you can add text and drawings too. When you send a picture, you can choose the amount of time the receiver has to be the picture, anywhere from a second to ten seconds. There is also a thing called “stories” where you can submit a photo or video for everyone on your list to see for up to twenty four hours.
Not only can you exchange pictures and videos, but on May 1, 2014, direct messaging was created so people could send longer messages as the character limit on pictures and videos is miniscule, even more so than Twitter.
In May 2015, up to two billion pictures and videos were being sent a day with Snapchat stories being viewed 500 million times a day. Six months later, six billion videos were sent a day. As of 2016, Snapchat videos now get seven billion views a day.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PD0u07wc7_M
4. Skype
Twelve years ago, a program to allow citizens of the world to video chat efficiently with family and friends around the world was born in Estonia in August 2003.
You can video chat, do a voice call, send files and images, and use instant messaging. The system is able to allow up to twenty five accounts at a time to video chat and other things for free. As of March 2014, there are over 663 million registered accounts and around 300 million active users.
3. Twitter
Founded on March 21, 2009, this social network is known for the fact that it only allows its users to send messages, or tweets, containing up to 140 characters.
The climax of Twitter’s popularity arrived in 2007 at South by Southwest, a conference held in Austin, Texas for music festivals, film stuff, and other fun things. The amount of tweets typed per day went from twenty thousand to sixty thousand while the conference was going on.
The design of their logo has gone through a few changes. Originally, it was just the name of the network in blue and it was like that for a little over four years. On February 27, 2012, a new design was made which turned out to be “Twitter” in black font with a small blue bird on the right. Finally, its current logo is just the blue bird.
Twitter’s headquarters is based in San Francisco, California and has over twenty five other offices across the globe. As of September 2015, there are over one billion accounts and more than 307 billion active users.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sR73YnYa0e0
2. Instagram
Instagram is an social network that is extremely popular with young adults. It is one of the most used, if not the most used, apps by YouTubers, bloggers, and the like. You can share pictures and sixteen second video clips with just the push of a button. When the picture is published to Instagram, it can be shared to other social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr.
Born in San Francisco, California on October 6, 2010, it has over four hundred million registered accounts and around four hundred million active users. It received over one hundred million active users by April 2012 and over three hundred million by December 2014. The name “Instagram” comes from blending the two words “camera” and “telegram” together.
The app was released to iPhone first and then on April 3, 2012, it was available to all Android phones running 2.2 Froyo or higher and was downloaded onto Android phones over a million times in less than twenty four hours.
“ You can use to improve the quality of your picture ”
About a year after the app’s launch, the company added the ability to include hashtags with photos so that the people who uploaded a picture would be able to send it to people’s feeds all over the world. Hashtags were an easier way for people to see other pictures and accounts that had similar interests in their feed.
In April 2012, Facebook wanted to buy Instagram and made an offer for a billion dollars in both cash and stock. Despite outrage from the public, Instagram was given to Facebook on April 12, 2012 for three hundred million dollars in cash and twenty three million shares in stock. Facebook hoped this purchase would help themselves grow, but Facebook only grew a small 3% while Instagram grew a whopping 23%.
One of the great things about Instagram is the variety of filters and other editing tools you can use to improve the quality of your picture. You can resize, sharpen, make a picture brighter or darker, and even make it more colourful. It’s a great and simple way for people to edit when they don’t have the knowledge or skills to edit with something a little more complicated like Photoshop.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czVYTXf11Ws
1. Facebook
With over two billion registered users and 1.55 billion active user accounts today, Facebook is the number one social networking website in the world. It was launched on February 4, 2004 by computer programmer and entrepreneur Mark Zuckerberg and his Harvard University classmates and roommates Andrew McCollum, Chris Hughes, Dustin Moskovitz, and Eduardo Saverin.
Facebook went through a couple of stages in its life before officially becoming Facebook. On October 28, 2003, Zuckerberg created Facemash. The software for the website was written during his sophomore year of university. The website was very different from Facebook as its purpose was just putting two pictures of different people beside of each other and deciding who was the more attractive one.
The website was shut down shortly after its launch and Zuckerberg risked facing charges for copyright violation, security breach as he had hacked into the Harvard website to get the pictures for the site, and individual privacy violation. He also was at risk for being expelled from the school. Fortunately, all charges against him were dropped.
After that, in January 2004, the code for another website was being written and on February 4, 2004, theFacebook was launched. theFacebook was created because Zuckerberg wanted everyone in the school to have a website where everyone would be able to keep in touch with each other. Within twenty four hours of its launch, between 1,200 and 1,500 people registered.
At the beginning, only Harvard University students were allowed to sign up and within the first month, over half of Harvard’s undergraduates were registered. By March 2004, it was expanded to three more schools: Columbia, Stanford, and Yale and then eventually made its way to all Boston-area schools and ivy leagues.
In 2005, “the” was dropped from the website name after the domain, facebook.com, was purchased in 2005.
By October 1 later that year, Facebook was given to more than twenty-one UK and other universities around the world. A month before that, a version of Facebook for high schools was created. By September 2006, Facebook was pretty much available to all countries that wanted it.
That wraps up our list of eight of the best social media networks. Again, social media is something that is used by so many people every single day and is an important thing in our lives.