Human nature by default has been programmed to be socially active to a certain extent. Some people are more active, while others are less so!
However, people have always been looking for ways to connect and network with each other. And, in this age of digitisation, people have found ways to be socially active on the internet, which is possible with the advent of the numerous social networking platforms and apps.
Now, even relationships begin, grow and end on social media. People no longer need a personal handshake or face-to-face meeting.
Social media sites have also grown in numbers by leaps and bounds. As per the statistics revealed on
Statista, approximately 2 billion users used social networking sites and apps in 2015. And, with the increased use of mobile devices, this number is likely to cross the 2.6 billion mark by 2018.
So, in this article, we discuss some of the most popular social media sites that are being explored by the world today. You can find out if your favourite social media platform is a part of this list and even learn about some really good online social platforms that you can start using today.
LEARN MORE ABOUT THESE POPULAR SOCIAL MEDIA SITES
This is easily the largest social networking site in the world and one of the most widely used. And, Facebook was perhaps the first that surpassed the landmark of 1 billion user accounts.
Apart from the ability to network with friends and relatives, you can also access different Facebook apps to sell online and you can even market or promote your business, brand and products by using paid Facebook ads.
Recently Facebook has lost the trust of millions of its users by allowing 3rd parties to access over 87 million users’ personal data. This is a massive breech of trust and has created a feeling of unrest amongst the social media platform’s audience. So much so that there is now a #deletefacebook campaign where people are completely removing themselves from Facebook and using other networks instead. If you’re concerned about what Facebook is doing with your data, then why not check out my guide on
alternatives to Facebook, and see if there’s a better place for you to interact with family and friends.
Number of active users per month: 1.59 billion approximately
Despite having been acquired by Facebook in 2014, this instant messaging platform exists as an independent entity.
It arrived on the scene much later than Facebook, but has been able to capture the imagination of millions of people across the world by giving them the ability to communicate and share instantly with individuals and groups. The WhatsApp call feature is just the icing on the cake!
Number of active users per month: 1 billion approximately
Tencent QQ (more popularly known as QQ) is an instant messaging (chat-based) social media platform. It became international (with more than 80 countries using it), after it was launched in China.
It can be used to stay in touch with friends through texts, video calls and voice chats. It even has a built-in translator to translate your chats. To find out more, head over to our
Chinese Social Media stats page.
Number of active users per month: 853 million approximately
This is an all-in-one communications app for messaging and calling (similar to WhatsApp) that enables you to connect with the people of your choice. It was also developed by Tencent in China and can easily work alongside QQ. As per the
BI intelligence report, the number of WeChat users are fast catching up with the number of WhatsApp users.
Number of active users per month: 697 million approximately
Like QQ and WeChat, QZone is yet another social networking service developed by Tencent. It enables you to share photos, watch videos, listen to songs, write blogs, maintain diaries and so on. It also empowers you to choose the accessories and customize the look and feel of your QZone webpages.
Number of active users per month: 640 million approximately
Having been owned by Yahoo since 2013, Tumblr serves as a social media cum micro
blogging platform that can be used to find and follow things that you like. You can also use it to post anything, including multimedia, to a short-form blog. Moreover, it gives you the flexibility to customize almost everything.
Number of active users per month: 555 million approximately
Instagram was launched as a unique social networking platform that was completely based on sharing photos and videos. This photo sharing social networking app thus enables you to capture the best moments of your life, with your phone’s camera or any other camera, and convert them into works of art.
This is possible because Instagram allows you to apply multiple filters to your photos and you can easily post them to other popular social networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter. It is now part of the Facebook empire. Learn
how to grow your Instagram audience.
Number of active users per month: 400 million approximately
This social networking site enables you to post short text messages (called tweets), containing a limited number of characters (up to 140), to convey your message to the world. With the growing craze for online shopping, Twitter also makes it possible to promote your businesses and even shop directly through tweets. Learn how to
create the perfect Twitter profile.
Number of active users per month: 320 million approximately
9 – Google+
Owned by the tech giant Alphabet (Google), this interest-based social networking platform enables you to stay in touch with people by sharing messages, photos, videos, useful links to sites and so on. It also extends support for video conferencing through Hangouts and allows businesses to promote their brands and products through Google+ business pages.
Number of active users: 300 million approximately
Offered by Baidu of China, a search engine company, Baidu Tieba (known as Postbar internationally) is a social forum network based on the keyword searches in the Baidu search engine. This discussion forum works on the unique concept of allowing you to create a social network group for a specific topic, using the search, or even to join an existing online social group.
Number of active users per month: 300 million approximately
Skype, owned by Microsoft, is one of the most popular communication-based social networking platforms. It allows you to connect with people through voice calls, video calls (using a webcam) and text messaging. You can even conduct group conference calls. And, the best part is that Skype-to-Skype calls are free and can be used to communicate with anyone, located in any part of the world, over the internet.
Number of active users per month: 300 million approximately
This multi-lingual social platform, which is available in more than 30 languages, is known for its instant text messaging and voice messaging capabilities. You can also share photos and videos and audio messages, using Viber. It offers you the ability to call non-Viber users through a feature named Viber Out.
Number of active users per month: 249 million approximately
This is a highly popular microblogging social platform in China that is known for its hybrid mix of Twitter’s and Facebook’s features.
Number of active users per month: 222 million approximately
LINE is a globally available messaging social network that enables you to share photos, videos, text messages and even audio messages or files. In addition, it allows you to make voice and video calls at any time of the day.
Number of active users per month: 215 million approximately
This is an image messaging social platform that enables you to chat with friends by using pictures. It allows you to explore news and even check out live stories that are happening around the world.
Number of active users per month: 200 million approximately
YY is a major video-based social networking platform in China that enables group video chats. In such chats, more than 100,000 members can watch a single person doing an activity. Such an activity can be anything from giving a tutorial video to singing karaoke, which helps the users earn virtual currency that they can later convert into cash.
Number of active users per month: 122 million approximately
VK is one of the largest social networking platforms in Russia and has quite similar features to Facebook.
Number of active users per month: 100 million approximately
This is a photo sharing and visual bookmarking social media site or app that enables you to find new ideas for your projects and save them. So, you can do DIY tasks or home improvement projects, plan your travel agenda and so on by using Pinterest.
Number of active users per month: 100 million approximately
LinkedIn is easily one of the most popular professional social networking sites or apps and is available in over 20 languages. It is used across the globe by all types of professionals and serves as an ideal platform to connect with different businesses, locate and hire ideal candidates, and more. It boasts over 400 million members.
Number of active users per month: 100 million approximately
This instant messaging network is similar to WhatsApp and is available across platforms in more than eight languages. However, Telegram has always focused more on the privacy and security of the messages you send over the internet by using its platform. So, it empowers you to send messages that are encrypted and self-destructive. This encryption feature has only just been made available for WhatsApp, whereas Telegram has always provided it.
Number of active users per month: 100 million approximately
This social media platform enables you to submit content and later vote for the content. The voting determines whether the content moves up or down, which is ultimately organized based on the areas of interest (known as subreddits).
Number of active users per month: 100 million approximately
Taringa is one of the largest social networking platform in Latin America and allows users to share their experiences, content and more.
Number of active users: 75 million approximately
This is a local search- and discovery-based social media platform that enables you to find the ideal places (based on your location) to go to with friends and loved ones. It also gives appropriate search results for the best food outlets, night entertainment places and more in your area. The social networking feature is now available in a separate app named Swarm.
Number of active users: 40 million approximately
This is the largest social networking site in China and is literally a platform for everyone. It has been highly popular with the youth due to its similarity to Facebook, as it allows users to easily connect with others, quickly share thoughts and posts, and even update their moods.
Number of active users per month: More than 30 million approximately
This is a great social media site based on friendship and dating and, in 2011, it acquired another social networking platform called hi5. It enables you to socialise with others through games, browsing profiles, common interests and so on.
Number of active users: 25 million approximately
This dating-based social networking site operates in more than 200 countries. It shares details about people nearby in your area and even about people whom you may have bumped into in real life.
Number of active users per month: 20 million approximately
This is a music-focused social networking site and provides an interactive and user-submitted network of friends. It also provides blogs, groups, personal profiles, pictures, videos and so on.
Number of active users: 20 million approximately
StumbleUpon is an intelligent social networking platform that finds or discovers content and recommends the same to its users. You are thus empowered to discover webpages, images, videos and so on and then rate them as per your interest and taste.
Number of active users: 25 million approximately
the-dots.com is a networking platform that helps everyone involved in the creative process connect, collaborate and commercialise helping build a stronger, more profitable and diverse creative sector. Born out of a genuine passion to make the creative industries more open and meritocratic, founder Pip Jamieson launched the platform in the UK in 2014.
This is a community-based social networking site, especially for those who live in New York. It offers an online magazine to target teens through fashion tips, advice and chat. It also allows young adults to let everyone know about their skills and interests.
Skyrock is a French social networking site that offers its users a free and personal web space to create and post blogs, add profiles and exchange messages. Apart from French and English, it is also available in five other languages.
32 – Delicious
It is known for being the leading social bookmarking service. Having been launched in 2003, Delicious is ideal for storing, sharing and discovering web bookmarks. It also allows its users to tag them with any keywords.
Snapfish is a web-based photo sharing social networking site that offers unlimited storage to its members for uploading photos. You can thus put away your storage space concerns for your vast collection of images.
This is the ideal social networking platform for musicians and professionals to connect with others in the music industry. It offers different tools to musicians to manage their careers and offers them the right access to their music industry partners and fans.
This is an American social networking site for people who love movies and want to connect with like-minded people by sharing their movie reviews and ratings. Its users are likely to learn about movies and get information about new movies.
This social media site helps activists connect around the globe with similar individuals, businesses and organisations that are making an impact on society. It also encourages people to lead a healthy and green lifestyle.
This ad-supported social networking website is a community for mothers and mothers-to-be that enables them to get support and advice on various topics, such as pregnancy, fashion, health and food. It also helps them learn from the experiences of other mothers.
Ravelry is a community-based social network that is targeted at people who are interested in fibre arts, such as spinning, knitting, weaving and crocheting. Such people can share their own collections, different ideas and learn from the experiences of other members for better collaboration possibilities.
This is a private social networking platform for neighbourhoods in the US. The objective is pretty simple: allowing users to get connected with the people in their area.
Wayn is a travel- and lifestyle-based social networking platform and offers its users the ability to discover where to go, what to do and how to meet like-minded people to share their experiences.
This social gaming community can easily be accessed on the move from any mobile device. With this mobile gaming-based social network, users can socialise, create avatars, play games and purchase virtual goods.
YouTube is the world’s largest video-sharing social networking site that enables users to upload and share videos, view them, comment on them and like them. This social network is accessible across the globe and even enables users to create a YouTube channel where they can upload all their personally recorded videos to showcase to their friends and followers.
This is an entertainment-based, short-form video sharing social media site where members can easily share videos that are six seconds long. It belongs to the Twitter family and allows easy integration with other social networking platforms to share and watch videos.
Classmates allows users to find, connect and keep in touch with friends and acquaintances from school and college. It is also possible for users to upload their yearbook from their school years.
This is an online genealogy social platform which supports more than 42 languages and empowers its users to create family trees, upload and browse through family photos and manage their own family history. It could also be used by people to find their ancestors and get more information about them.
Viadeo is an online business-based social networking site that helps business people, mostly those in Europe, connect with one another. It is available in about different languages.
This professional social networking site offers features that are similar to LinkedIn’s features, with its main users based in Switzerland, Austria and Germany. However, it is unique in the sense that it enables closed group discussions between the members of a certain company or business.
This blogging-based social networking platform hosts weblogs, photo blogs and social networking profiles for its users.
This San Francisco-based social networking site is available in Russia, as Zhivoy Zhurnal or Zhe Zhe. It enables users to maintain a diary, blog or journal, along with privacy controls.
Friendster was previously a social networking site to find friends and stay in touch, but is now a social gaming network for game lovers in Asia.
This comedy video social website is aimed at bringing together the funniest videos from the web. Celebrities follow this social platform a lot and it enables users to share, upload and rate videos.
Gaia Online is an anime-themed social networking and forums-based website. It gives users access to avatars, virtual world, games and so on.
This photo-sharing social media site, which is available in more than 20 languages, is ideal for users’ daily dose of inspiration or motivation. It enables users to view and share highly inspirational images with their friends.
This social media site allows users to share content on the basis of their personal interests in the form of videos, photos and journals. It also seamlessly integrates with Facebook.
DeviantArt is regarded as the largest online social networking community for art lovers and artists. It enables users to take photos of their artwork and share them with others.
This is another highly popular photo-sharing website. It serves as a platform to upload numerous high quality images, especially by photographers or people who love photography. It is also an efficient online photo management and sharing service.
Formerly known as myYearbook, MeetMe is aimed at users who want to find new friends and chat with them. This makes it highly popular among teens and young students.
This social networking portal enables you to find groups of like-minded people, who have similar interest to you, near your locality (anywhere in the world). It also facilitates offline group meetings and you can become a part of such groups and their discussions.
Tout is a social networking cum micro-blogging platform that allows you to view and share videos that are 15 seconds long. The videos that are shared on this platform are known as touts.
This is a popular Japanese social networking service that has around 20 million active users. It enables you to connect with your friends and loved ones in a convenient way and even based on your areas of interest.
This Chinese social networking site has something for registered as well as unregistered users. It enables registered users to record information and create content based on music, films, books and events in the cities of China. Unregistered users of Douban can find reviews and ratings of books, music and movies.
62 – Vero
Vero says that its “a social network for anyone who loves anything enough to share it – and wants control over who they share it with. Just like we do in real life.”
Vero is a subscription based social network which has no ads and does not collect any personal user data. It’s a great alternative to Facebook as has some really lovely features. It’s a totally different model to Facebook in the sense that Facebook needs user data in order to make money from them.
Vero does collect some usage data which is used to see how often the app is used. Another great thing about the usage data they collect is how its displayed to you. Vero want to address the issue of social media addiction.
I hope that the above list of social networking portals, which are suitable for different categories like gaming, making friends, dating, photo sharing and
blogging, proves valuable to you.
