Different social media sites are used for various purposes. Some top social media sites are only famous in specific regions than others. This explains why some of the sites have a low percentage of popularity, although their usage is concentrated in a small area.
Overview of Social Media Sites
Examples of social media sites include; WeChat, Line, Snapchat, Viber, etc.
Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp have almost equal popularity across the world with Facebook leading. Snapchat follows these two closely. However, Snapchat has not been embraced in North America.
Notably, the youths are significant users of all these social websites. The ages of 16 to 24 are substantial fans of the sites.
7 Top Social Media Sites List
Below is a list of thetop social media sites today.
Facebook dominates the social media industry, with 85% of internet users. This percentage excludes China. Today many other social media sites are coming up. The sites pose big competition on Facebook. However, given the number of users, it is difficult to overtake Facebook popularity completely.
It is the best and convenient channel for communication. Networking through Facebook has been made better through Facebook messenger.
Facebook is liked by many users today, with more than one billion daily logins. People like Facebook for various reason, and not limited to; vast community, easy to use, easy to create and join fan groups and pages. Also, Facebook has integrated Facebook messenger. With the above benefits, Facebook is not without shortcomings. The following are the disadvantages of the site;
It’s highly addictive, with many users spending a lot of their time on instead of engaging in productive activities. It’s challenging to follow updates, especially when the updates are done frequently and possibly by many friends.
It’s difficult to adjust the privacy settings to fit your desired privacy.
Facebook gives its users the option to use it at the individual level, and create or join groups and pages.
Facebook Messenger
This comes second after Facebook since it is used by Facebook users. Messenger has cool features that make it the most preferred messaging app. In 2014 Facebook acquired WhatsApp, and it has changed the messaging landscape with WhatsApp coming first in popularity when it comes to messaging apps.
Twitter is a leading microblogging platform where users communicate using short messages. Many users find the twitter convenient to convey information, especially the breaking news since the messages are brief and straight to the point. For each message, the user is limited to write up to 280 characters.
Also, Twitter allows the users to follow tweets easily, and they can choose the tweets they are interested in following. It has a large community of users. Also, large brands do post their essential messages on twitter.
Like every other technological platform, Twitter has evolved immensely. Since Facebook has got more users than Twitter, the team has developed the twitter platform to function more like Facebook. This development has led to critics, especially for the fans who were pleased with the former functionality. Today, you can share any content on Twitter. Possibly in the future, twitter has timelines where the users will be able to update their posts.
Twitter is a bit disorganized and hard to find people; hence, some people don’t like it.
This is a networking platform for professionals. Many professional. Like the site since they can make new connections here, and it’s an easy to use platform. On the downside, LinkedIn gives a lot of information at tikes which cab be annoying to the users. However, if you would like to grow your career, you should sign up on this platform. Provide a killer-profile with essential details like education, certification, experience, awards, etc.
YouTube
YouTube leads in the area of entertainment. It has a vast database of entertaining videos, songs, and entertainment channels. If you want to post or watch a video, YouTube is the channel you first think of. YouTube has a comment area where you write your opinion about a video you have viewed. The comment section if visible by everyone; hence, you can go through the viewer comments to get an overview of the video.
Google owns YouTube, and it’s ranked second largest after Google itself. It has everything you would think of in the areas of music and videos. There is YouTube TV too for live streaming. The kids YouTube is a dedicated area for kids’ cartoons. It has a parental control feature that allows the parents to control what the children are watching online.
On YouTube, most of the users are visitors without accounts on the site or mostly use the site without logging in to the YouTube account. The user experience is more or less the same unless you want filtered videos which you receive regular notices and updates.
Instagram tops as a photo-sharing platform. Users can share videos too, and its one of the leading advertising platform. Instagram influencers use this site to generate handsome income through business networks.
Facebook owns Instagram since 2012. Today, the application is available on android and windows devices unlike before when it was only available for iOS gadgets.
WhatsApp is a site of choice for messaging. To use WhatsApp, you only need data or internet. The site is free and convenient for relaying information.
WhatsApp is the leading instant messaging platform globally. The application uses data or internet connection. You can send and receive messages on this platform. Also, the app allows for audio and video calls. However, voice calls features are not available in some countries.
Notably, WhatsApp uses your phone number unlike other platforms in this category that use the username and a pin. WhatsApp allows its users to customize their profiles, notifications sound, and wallpapers.
Technology is changing rapidly. The most popular social media platforms today will not be widespread in the future. Other social networks will emerge, offering better experiences. The better sites will overtake the old ones making them obsolete.
However, some famous social media sites will remain, but they must keep up with the changes to stay relevant.