Social networks today are not just a way of communication, but something more. For millions of people, they are work, and it's not about those who work directly in the offices of companies. In social networks, you can not only watch videos, chat with friends or read interesting stories, but also promote yourself or your brand, which makes websites an ideal place for both leisure and for earning.
We decided to find out where the most people are, walking through the top ten most popular social networks in the world. Here there will be not only American projects, but also Chinese and even one Russian (it is not difficult to guess which one).
10. Pinterest
A popular photo hosting with elements of a social network was created by American Ben Zilberman in 2010 (the beginning of the service), although he opened the company of the same name two years earlier.
The beta version of the site had first closed registration, after - registration by invitation. For everyone Pinterest it became available only in 2012, and already in 2016 it took the 50th place in the ranking of the most visited sites according to alexa.com, although Time magazine back in 2011 put “Interest” in the list of the best Internet resources of the year.
Zilberman claims that he personally wrote and sent letters to the first 5 thousand users when no one knew about the site, and his company was based in a rented apartment and consisted of himself and several programmers.
9. LinkedIn
LinkedIn - This is a social network for establishing business contacts, launched in 2003 by American Reed Hoffman and currently has over 600 million users. Not surprisingly, in 2016, the owners managed to earn $ 26.2 billion for it when the service was sold to Microsoft.
This site is not intended for entertainment and posting of memes with cats: resumes are published here and business contacts are maintained.
Despite the fact that the site is not engaged in anything immoral or illegal, Roskomnadzor still found violations in its activities and blocked its work in Russia in 2016. The reason was that LinkedIn collects and processes personal data of users and does not store information in the territory of the Russian Federation.
In 2019, it was decided to create a domestic analogue of a foreign social network from the Work in Russia portal, but even according to the most optimistic forecasts, the popularity of the new resource will not be able to compare closely with the original.
8. VKontakte
The most popular social network in Russia was launched on October 10, 2006, and in 2017 it entered the top 10 most visited Internet resources in the world. Pavel Durov, creator of "In contact with", Does not deny that he drew inspiration from Facebook, but does not consider his brainchild a clone of a foreign social network.
Now VK is about 100 million users per month, over 6.5 billion messages per day and almost 80% of all mobile traffic on the Russian Internet.
In addition, the company regularly holds various offline events like “VK Fest”, to which leading bloggers and famous musicians are invited. The two-day festival, held since 2015, was visited with pleasure by such stars as Mumiy Troll, Beasts, Svetlana Loboda and others.
7. Google+
The social network from the search giant began to work in 2011, although Google tried to occupy this niche much earlier: for example, in 2003 the corporation wanted to buy Friendster - one of the first social networks.
One of the chips Google+ it was that she used the information that people shared to improve their personal search results.
We included Google+ in our top solely because of the large number of registered accounts, since it is difficult to name a popular social network. Most users tried it “to taste” and dropped it, which led first to a decrease in popularity, and later to the closure of the registration of ordinary accounts (it was closed on April 2, 2019). Now the social network works exclusively with G Suite accounts.
6. Sina Weibo
Sina weibo Is a Chinese microblogging service, a cross between Facebook and Twitter. This social network is practically unknown here, but in China it is among the top ones. It was launched in 2009, and already in 2013 the number of users exceeded 500 million.
It is available in Chinese and English, so not everyone will be able to use it, even if desired, although registration is not difficult to figure out. If you are learning Chinese, then in Sina Weibo you can find many native speakers who can help with learning.
5. Qzone
Another social network from the Middle Kingdom, the most popular in the country and one of the oldest in the world, since it was launched back in 2005.
Outside of china Qzone plainly not known and almost no one uses it outside the country, although in addition to Chinese, it has an English version.
The largest video hosting in the world began its work in 2005 in the United States, although domestic users began to use it in large quantities only in 2007, when the Russian version of the site was launched.
By the number of visitors (accounts in this case are not counted) Youtube takes second place among all sites, and in China it is officially blocked (but they still use it).
Here you can find absolutely everything: cute videos with cats, instructions for installing plastic windows, tips for changing the oil in a car or learning how to play the guitar. The most popular is the PewDiePie channel of Swedish blogger Felix Arvid Ulf Cherberg, who in 2019 was the first to overcome the 100 million followers mark.
3. Instagram
The main social network for visuals, created in the USA, appeared on the App Store in the fall of 2010, and in December the number of users amounted to 1 million. Now Instagram More than 1 billion people use it, and the lion's share of active users goes into the application every day.
Despite a huge amount of criticism, Insta continues to rapidly gain popularity: not only ordinary users, but stars of show business and sports are actively promoting their accounts, making good money on advertising.
2. Facebook
The site, launched in 2004 by four American students, is currently the most visited in the world, and the company's annual turnover is over $ 50 billion, and about 40% of them are net profit.
History of creation Facebook and the relationship between Mark Zuckerberg, Chris Hughes, Dustin Moskovitz and Eduardo Severin formed the basis of the film "Social Network". The main roles in it were played by such stars as Jesse Eisenberg, Justin Timberlake and Andrew Garfield.
1. Twitter
Twitter It was launched by the American Jack Dorsey in 2006 and also very quickly gained immense popularity around the world. The word "microblogging" came from here, thanks to the special format of notes on the site. Also, it was precisely on Twitter that the debate about dependence on social networks began, which has not subsided so far.
Not only athletes, actors or musicians keep their accounts here, but also politicians from different countries. The activity of users of the resource is eloquently indicated by the fact that back in 2010, during the World Cup and NBA Cup matches, the number of “tweets” exceeded 3,000 per second.