When something is going on around you, or around the world, where do you go for information? Breakthroughs in technology and the advancements made on mobile devices are making newspapers a things of the past. Consumers of media are turning to social platforms as their go to for information, sharing, and interactions.
With all these consumers it is only natural that there are multiple platforms available for people all around the world.
The United States is home to a wide variety of social media platforms. With apps such as Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Yik Yak, Instagram, Vine, and many more how do we pick which we are active on?
Mark Zuckerberg remains king in the US with Facebook dominating the social platforms. Facebook offers it’s users a widespread reach which creates an easy opportunity for interaction, and as a result has engaged an impressive 900,000,000 estimated unique monthly visitors.
Its popularity can be contributed to its easy to share platform. Zuckerberg has simplified the user experience and has made it an easy to use site and app for people of all ages.
With so much competition it’s important to look at why Facebook has seen success. Facebook embodies bits and pieces of other social platforms and provides a one stop shop for users who want it all.This makes it such an easy choice for people, they have one site where they can share all the content they want.
Facebook’s supremacy of social media domination has not lent itself across cultural borders. The most popular source for social media in China is QZone. QZone was created by Tencent in 2005. QZone is in essence a customizable blog that allows it’s users to keep diaries, send photos, and listen to music. With monthly average users having grown to more than 600 million, members of the chinese community have embraced the social site and it has spread from personal blogs to sources of shared thoughts.
Founded in 2007, V Kontakte is the most popular social media site in Europe with more than 100 million users. It is particularly popular among Russian-speaking users, as it is the fourth most visited site in Russia, however it engages users outside of Russia as well. Countries where V Kontakte is popular include Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Ukraine. The site operates similarly to Facebook, users can send both private and public messages to friends, create public pages and groups, play games, and share/tag photo and videos.
Popular in the former Soviet Republics, and again Russia, is the social networking site Odnoklassniki. This site was founded by Albert Popkov in 2006 and provides a platform for classmates and old friends to connect. Not much is readily available or known about this site other than that it tailors to the audiences that are looking to connect with old friends.
Facenama is a social networking site based out of Iran. The site has a primary audience of males with no college education that access the site from home. The site gets about 6.5 daily views per visitor, with 88 percent of visitors coming from within Iran. Facenama seems to be a sort of combination of popular social sites in America, with a focus on video. The site looks a lot like the early Myspace in that you can see who is online at the time you are, and has special designations to groups.
It seems that social networking sites are here to stay. Their integration into cultures across the globe is evident with the wide variety of sites that are available to users in varying countries.
