Social networks on the Internet. Social media

The number of social media users is growing exponentially. Some services are more popular, others less popular. However, everything is changing, and it is quite possible that while you are studying this rating, some previously unknown social network will take the lead.

Facebook with the number of accounts exceeding 1.2 billion. The network, founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, has held first place in the world TOPs since its inception.

Google+, the number of users of which is approaching the 600 million mark. The social network, founded in 2001 by Google, moves up and down in the rankings, however, it is invariably among the ten most successful projects.

Twitter with half a billion users. The presence of a mini-blog on this social network has become a real trend, because the most influential people on the planet have accounts on Twitter.

Sina Weibo, the number of accounts exceeds 500 million. This is perhaps the only social network from our rating that does not have a Russian-language interface. However, it doesn’t need this, since it is designed for friendly residents of the Middle Kingdom who want to communicate exclusively with each other and have been doing this successfully since 2009.

In contact with is a social network created in Russia in 2006 and is one of the most successful domestic projects to date. The number of VKontakte users is rapidly approaching 300 million, which means that the social network is used not only in our country.

Badoo with an audience of almost 230 million, it is an international dating site with a full set of social network functions.

Tumblr– a social network for those who like to blog, as well as read and comment on the blogs of other users. Created in 2007, this social network today has about 220 million users.

Classmates- another well-known Russian project that has become a world leader. Since 2006, the number of Odnoklassniki users has increased from 0 to 210 million people.

Instagram is a social network that came out into the world in 2010 and quickly moved to the top of the rankings thanks to the ability to share photos and videos with many users.

Pinterest is a social network whose 200 million users can share a wide variety of ideas with each other, from innovative business solutions to holiday pie recipes.

Flickr. Almost 70 million users of this social network exchange a huge number of photos every day.

MySpace, created in 2003, it has about 50 million accounts and is a social network in its classic form. Exchange of messages, opinions, photos and videos, dating, blog platform, in a word, everything that is required for a pleasant pastime.

MeetUp is a social network whose purpose is to unite people in groups for real communication. More than 40 million users have found friends with similar interests here and have a great time with them without the Internet.

Tagged. Almost 40 million users of this social network can meet and communicate with each other.

Askfm– a place where you can get an answer to any question, because from more than 38 million answers you can definitely choose the right one.

ClassMates- the English-language prototype of the Russian Odnoklassniki, created back in 1995, but did not achieve equally impressive results. The project's audience is about 15 million people.

Orkut- another project from Google that did not become a hit in the USA and Europe, but is very popular among residents of Latin America, India and a number of other countries. The project is currently closed and is being relocated to the Hello social network platform.

Today, on social networks you can not only like photos and follow the lives of your friends, but also learn foreign languages. Special language social networks will help you find a live interlocutor who will improve the level of your foreign language. And at the same time it will help to replenish your vocabulary, get rid of hackneyed phrases and enliven your speech with real phrases of English, German, Italian, Chinese, and any other language. All Courses has collected for you a selection of popular language social networks created just for this purpose.

You can already communicate “with a dictionary”, but are you still worried about pronunciation? Then social networks will come to the rescue, where you can find new friends around the world.

Lang8

The social network unites people from 190 countries, which means 90 languages ​​to learn. The idea of ​​the site is simple: the user writes a phrase or post in the language he is studying, and a native speaker checks and corrects speech, grammatical and spelling errors, if any. You can attach tags to notes, and the most popular ones get to the top. You can also make friends on the site.

There are two options for using the network: paid and free. The second allows you to learn only two languages ​​and make no more than 500 notes in a notebook. Paid content has an unlimited number of posts and languages, and at the same time you are allowed to post photos and leave comments in pdf format.

Lingq

Lingq focuses on expanding your vocabulary, so communication requires at least minimal knowledge of a foreign language. The social network has been open since 2007 and today offers access to 16 languages, including English, French, Japanese, Swedish, Italian, Chinese, and German, among others. All new words are easily saved in your profile. In addition to free communication, you have access to audio lessons and you can submit written work for review.

The site has paid and free content.

English, Baby!

The main feature of the site is communication in correct English, American or British. To do this, the site has daily free lessons on a new topic, thematic audio materials, including monologues and interviews with celebrities. Many people use the Internet when preparing for TOEFL. There are also those who prefer to improve their grammar and just chat.

There is a separate section for English teachers where teachers exchange experiences.

There is paid content.

Interpals.net

A site for finding a language exchange partner. Friends from 154 countries are now available. And these are more than 100 languages, including the main European and Asian ones. The social network is completely free. You can register with it via Facebook. There is a forum and chat for communication; you choose your partner yourself. You can select your interlocutor by age and gender, or by specifying a specific country. The resource always shows who is online and who is not currently on the site.

Conversationexchange.com

At Conversationexchange.com you need to register and select a partner to communicate in Windows Messenger or Skype. The resource is also interesting because it helps you find a native speaker of the language you are studying in your own city. This way you get an additional opportunity to communicate with a person one-on-one. In addition, on the site you can improve your written language.

Speaking24.com

After registering on the site, you will see a quick search for native speakers. You can choose your interlocutor by age, gender, or language being studied. The resource will immediately offer you the person’s contacts on Skype or other instant messengers. The main advantage of the site is communication. It encourages free speech and does not focus too much on grammatical errors.

Easy language exchange

The new social network for communicating in a foreign language today has about 72,000 users from 56 countries. The site pays special attention to learning the English language: there are courses for beginners, as well as courses for those who want to increase their vocabulary and improve their grammar. In addition, useful articles are published on the resource, there is a forum where you can find someone to talk to for learning Chinese, Arabic, Korean and other languages. A separate plus is registration as a teacher.

Paltalk

The service offers more than 5,000 active chat rooms where you can discuss the latest news in music, sports, current events, and just chat with people around the world. And these are 37 major European and Asian languages. Additionally, you can communicate via text messages, which will allow you to master the written language.

Internations

A site for advanced users of foreign languages. A community that can not only help you find people to talk to and friends around the world, but also invite you to attend events and meetings. The service will be very useful for immigrants - in a short time a person will be able to acquire a new circle of friends and get to know the city.

The site will help you practice the language you are learning. On the main page you can immediately select the interface language: English, Russian and Spanish. You select your interlocutor yourself: gender, native language, target language. In addition, there are sections “Forum”, “Articles”, “Invitations”. To communicate, you must register on the site.

HelloTalk

This is not a social network, but a chat program for a mobile device that allows you to communicate with your interlocutor via text and voice messages in more than 100 languages. The program options allow you to practice pronunciation, as well as collect your own database of materials on the language you are learning (audio, words, sentences, pictures).

This article discusses several key resources by functionality, target audience and main focus.

Contents:

The essence

The main goal of such a service is to make Internet communication between users remote from each other as simple as possible.

Some of these sites operate only within one country or are popular with a certain language segment, others have an international format and people from different countries are registered on them.

Principle of operation:

• Creating a page or account;
• In it, he may or may not indicate his interests, hobbies, place of work and study, place of residence and other data;
• Using site search, integration with or phone number, account in others, he can find other people he knows;
• You can also find people who share the same interests and hobbies as the person you register;
• Now you can easily communicate with these people, and to simplify this process, you can add them as friends;
• After registration, he can also use other additional functionality.

Communication via CC is available only to registered members, although information from some groups is also available for reading by people who are not registered on the site.

Only the person who has an account, or only the one who is added to Friends (depending on the page), can write to you personally.

Advice. When registering, pay great attention to your privacy settings. It depends on them who will be able to see your page on the Internet, who will be able to write to you and see your photos.

Kinds

• Microblogging. The most famous option is where users make small text notes in real time. Sorting is carried out mainly using hashtags (keywords written in the #keyword format);
• Acquaintance. Created for people who want to find a partner for one purpose or another. Examples are Tinder, Grindr, Mamba, etc. Depending on what type of dating she is targeting, her profiles may be detailed or contain only key information;
• Photos. The services seem to be designed for posting photos; a profile in them requires a minimum of information. In addition to the function of posting photos, you can carry out personal correspondence. Navigation is also done using hashtags;
• Video. Not too common yet, especially in Russia, most. It has the same operating principle as Instagram, but users post videos rather than photos. They are especially good because they are convenient for organizing live broadcasts;
• Communication. Widespread in Russia (VK and are popular, at the global level -). They allow you not only to find friends and communicate with them, but also to post photos, videos, join groups, etc.

Depending on the type, they have one or another target audience.

Thus, it was statistically revealed that the majority of Snapchat and Instagram users are under 35 years old, while the majority of Odnoklassniki’s audience is 40+.

Communication

The main goal of SS is to organize convenient communication for people. This is achieved in several ways:

• Dialogues is a format of personal correspondence in which you can write a message to any user who does not have this feature disabled. At the same time, such correspondence is strictly confidential and is seen only by you and your interlocutor;
• Conversations or Chats– this is correspondence, created on the same principle as dialogues, but you can add an unlimited number of people to it;
• Commenting– a comment can be left under any photos, microblog entries, etc., unless this option is disabled;
• Microblogging, Walls and other services for posting posts on your account that all your friends see (or a specific list of them, depending on the settings);
• Groups, public pages and other methods for uniting by interest, in which a topic is created for discussion (like outdated forums).

Almost any service provides the opportunity for personal correspondence, but it is social networks such as Facebook and VK that make such correspondence especially convenient.

Media files

Some services also allow you to upload and distribute various non-personal media files. Thus, VK actively operates the My Videos service.

The user can choose a movie that interests him among thousands of downloaded ones, save it to his page, tell his friends about it by sharing it on a microblog, etc.

Facebook carefully monitors compliance with copyright and does not allow the distribution of feature films.

You can only upload short videos that you have shot yourself; you can also share them from other services.

A similar situation arises with music.

While there is an extensive library of audio files, songs and audio books, it does not allow the downloading of non-personal audio recordings.

It is difficult to imagine the life of a modern person without virtual communication. Proof of this is the numerous social networks in which more than 60% of all Russians are registered. Chatting with friends, business negotiations, watching movies and much more has now become available on one site. In this article you will learn about the most popular social networks on the Runet and how to create your own account on them.

What is a social network?

A site on which you can create a personalized page is called a social network. The first online communication resource was created in 1995 in America under the name Classmates. It became the prototype of the future Russian-language Odnoklassniki website.

The real boom of social networks began in 2003, when the most popular services appeared - Facebook and MySpace. This phenomenon came to Russia several years later under the banner of the well-known VKontakte website. Since then, the number of users who have created their own accounts has only grown, increasingly displacing real communication.

Free social networks have helped take human communication to a new level, which is supported by high technology. After all, ten years ago no one could have thought that the Internet would replace real meetings and phone calls.

However, everything is not as rosy as it might seem at first glance. By registering on social networks, most people are running away from the real world. After all, in virtual reality you can put on a mask, try on a new role and be bolder. Unfortunately, not everyone can afford this in everyday life. Just a few years after the advent of social networks, numerous cases of psychosomatic disorders were recorded among users.

In addition, the danger of communicating on the Internet lies in the dissemination of personal and contact information. After all, anyone can find all the information about another person and use it for their own selfish purposes. Therefore, before registering online and posting information about yourself, you should think about whether this is really necessary.

The most popular network on the Runet is VKontakte.

The most popular social network on the Runet was founded in 2006 by web developer Pavel Durov. However, for the first year, registration on the site was available only to university students at St. Petersburg State University after confirmation of real data. But after identification on the network, it became available to everyone. Every year VKontakte only becomes more popular, and today the number of daily visitors has exceeded 70 million.

In order to become a member of the largest portal in Europe, you need Internet access and a mobile phone. Registration is carried out on the official website "VKontakte". The social network offers you to fill out a short form containing personal and contact information, after which you need to confirm your actions with a one-time code from an SMS message. Previously, registration was available without entering a mobile phone number, but with the appearance of a huge number of fake pages, some restrictions were introduced by the VKontakte administration.

The social network opens up enormous opportunities for its participants. Immediately after registration, you can fill out your profile, upload photos and start searching for acquaintances, friends, relatives and work colleagues. Thanks to the site, you can always stay in touch with loved ones, listen to music, watch movies and just have a good time.

At the moment, VKontakte offers its members not only new developments among popular applications, but also internal currency. This will optimize the work of numerous online stores and help develop an economic culture within the project.

Mail.ru, or "My World"

This social network was created based on the Mail.ru search engine in 2007. At the moment, the resource is one of the three most popular sites for communication in the Russian-speaking segment. In 2014, the lists of Mail.ru social networks were supplemented by the VKontakte resource, whose shares were sold by Pavel Durov.

The advantage of the Mail.ru portal, whose social network is available for registration to everyone, is its many convenient functions. For example, a global search engine, a question and answer service, weather, news, browser applications and much more. All this makes staying on the project as convenient as possible for work and entertainment. But the first place among all the portal’s services is occupied by “My World”.

The social network offers not only communication with friends, but also finding new acquaintances in communities, keeping abreast of world events and listening to your favorite music. Statistics show that the site is visited by more than 30 million users every day. The list of social networks is rightfully headed by Mail.ru. After all, it was she who managed to gather the maximum number of users on one resource.

Odnoklassniki.ru - a social network for finding old friends

The Odnoklassniki social network also owes its appearance to the company Mail.ru, which created it based on the prototype of the American Classmates website of the same name. The project was launched in March 2006 and continues to operate successfully to this day.

The resources "VKontakte" and "My World" are very similar to the site Odnoklassniki.ru. The social network also allows you to chat with friends, share photos and read news feeds. In addition, the site has many applications with games that will help brighten up your leisure time and take a break from everyday worries.

However, the main difference is the contingent of OK users. The social network is aimed at finding old friends and acquaintances. Accordingly, finding an army colleague or a former colleague on the site will not be difficult. Statistics show that young people aged 14 to 30 prefer to use VKontakte, while the older generation spends time on the Odnoklassniki website. The network was originally created to search for those with whom a person once sat at the same desk or skipped classes a long time ago. Apparently, this is why an unspoken rule of age division has formed on the Internet. And if you cannot find any person on VKontakte, then use the search on the Odnoklassniki website. The network has a convenient filter that allows you to indicate age, place of residence and work, hobbies and much more.

Entertainment resource "Photostrana"

The entertaining social network "Photostrana" is more reminiscent of a dating site than a portal for finding friends and relatives. The project has about 50 million users, the vast majority of whom are residents of the CIS countries.

Many note that the design of the American resource Facebook became the basis for creating the interface of the Photo Country website. The social network is indeed similar to its Western counterpart, although it is not as popular among RuNet users.

Most of the features on the site are paid. For example, in order to maintain your profile on the service, you need to constantly send paid SMS messages, otherwise your rating will rapidly fall. The system also offers you the opportunity to have your own pets and install various applications for communication and entertainment.

It should be noted that the resources “VKontakte” or “Odnoklassniki” are absolutely free, unlike the “Photostrana” site. The social network has not gained much popularity among Internet users. According to the majority, it is nothing more than another pumping out of money.

Blogging platform from Yandex

Social media lists generally do not include blogs. Although it was the blog that was originally created for online communication and information exchange. The Ya.ru service is a product of the largest search engine Yandex, which occupies a leading position in the Russian Internet.

Anyone can start their own online diary, to which only users of the system will have access. Thus, only his registered friends can read the author’s posts and leave comments.

A blog-based social network has its advantages, since a personal page is more like a full-fledged website. In addition, some blogging platforms allow users to subsequently purchase domains containing their content. This is especially true for bloggers with thousands of subscribers.

Registration on "Ya.ru" is free. After a simple identification procedure in the system, all functions from Yandex, including the electronic mail service, become available to the user.

Share your opinion on "Otzovik"

This project is a large social network for consumers. We all buy certain products every day, but we don’t even think that our opinion can help someone. The founders of the Otzovik project offer this opportunity to everyone. In addition, the opinion of each user is paid. This unique system has made the site very popular among housewives and young mothers who strive not only to communicate, but also to earn money on the Internet.

Registration on Otzovik is free. Simply indicate your mailbox address and WebMoney wallet number. Reviews with a large number of photos and voluminous text pay the highest.

On the site you can also invite acquaintances and correspond with friends, post personal photos and learn a lot of new things about products, services, new movies and music. For activity, the system accrues an additional coefficient, which subsequently affects the amount of payments. On average, active participants can earn up to 5 thousand rubles monthly, of which more than half of the amount will be passive income from viewing reviews by other participants. Today, not a single social network pays its members for communication on the site, so Otzovik is rightfully considered a unique resource.

Free social network "Privet.ru"

Not the most popular site for communication on the Runet, as confirmed by the official lists of social networks. However, those users who are registered on Privet.ru find the resource very convenient and functional. Lots of extensions, setting up a personal account, a lot of music and communities for communication - here there is everything that a real social network should have.

"My Page", which is the main section on the site, has various templates, which allows you to change the interface. This function is currently not available on any other communication resource. For example, to change the VKonakte interface, you need to install a special browser plugin. And even after installation, the changes will be visible only to the user himself, while on “Privet.ru” all friends can see the page design. The social network also allows you to share your news with the world, post photos and exchange comments.

Unfortunately, due to the unpopularity of the site, not many people register on it and the chance of finding a friend or former classmate is very low. If the project developers start promoting it and popularizing it among Russian-speaking users, then Privet.ru has every chance of becoming a popular social network in the CIS countries. It is possible that in the future the project will be able to compete with such social networks as VKontakte or Moi Mir.

Blog LiveJournal

The blogging platform LiveJournal, or, as it is commonly called, “LJ” (“Live Journal”), appeared back in 1999. Back then, no one knew about social networks, and people expressed themselves online through personal blogs. At the moment, bloggers not only share their ideas with the world, but also make good money from it by placing contextual advertising, referral links and affiliate program offers on their pages.

On the LJ website you can publish your own posts, create communities, share useful information and read articles from other users. Moreover, registration on "LiveJouranl" is absolutely free. When requesting popular phrases, almost all Runet search engines return articles with “LJ” on the first pages of the search. It should be noted that ordinary social networks are not so adapted to key queries, and it is much more difficult to find any information on them.

However, the site’s rating dropped significantly after 2011, when the resource administration began blocking users for biased reasons. Over the course of several years, the accounts of famous journalists, politicians and social activists were closed. High requirements for censorship of content on LiveJournal have caused users to switch to other resources, where control of the material posted is not so strict. For example, “My World” is a social network in which everyone can express their point of view on a particular issue. In most cases, the site administration will not ban him for this.

Foreign social networks

The lists of Runet social networks are also supplemented by foreign resources, on which a huge number of Russians are registered. The most popular of them is Facebook. It was this site that was taken as the basis for the current VKontakte. Facebook is an international social network where users from all over the world communicate. Registration in the system is free, but activation of the phone number and confirmation of passport data is required.

The MySpace website does not have a Russian interface, like, for example, Mail.ru. The social network is aimed exclusively at the English-speaking segment of users. Therefore, Twitter and Instagram are more popular among the Russian-speaking population. These resources allow you to post your photos and short posts online, which only your friends can see. The social network Instagram, for example, has gained enormous popularity thanks to filters that allow you to transform any image into colorful pictures. Registration on both sites is absolutely free and does not require user identification, as on “OK”.

The social network opens up many opportunities for Internet users. Now you can contact anyone via the Internet, and you don’t even need to know their phone number. Thanks to social networks, users open online stores and run their own businesses, find distant relatives and forgotten friends, make acquaintances and even start families. However, despite all the conveniences of high technology, we should not forget about real communication, which no computer program can replace.

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.