Hello,
I did not want there to be too much content in yesterday’s post because I wanted you to come up with ideas and debate. Now I am going to go through some of the top Social Network’s but I shall not rank them, you can if you would like. But I would like you to think about: How did they become successful? Why did they succeed over the other thousands of networks there are? Who is their audience? Are they all trying to do the same thing and compete or are they in different niches and trying to compliment each other? These are all questions you should be thinking about, and letting us all know about!
Most Common
Facebook
Well currently I do not think anyone can argue that Facebook, at least here in England, is the largest used Social Network. However I do not plan on ranking them, though you can if you would like. Facebook, according to the timeline I showed you yesterday, is the newest big scale Social Network. So, how did they become so successful so quickly? I do not know the answer to this, but I can try guessing. Facebook actually started in 2004 and was extremely successful as it was launched only to students at Harvard University and within a month, half of the student body had joined. Now that is a lot of people for one month in a closed network! Another thing that has increased their success is the fact that it went Open Source and allowed people to make applications, I believe this was new at the time and not many other networks had tried it.
Linked In
This Social Network is not quite as generalised as Facebook, it is specialised for business use. Some people think that it is surprising that people would use LinkedIn as Facebook and some of the others have a bigger audience. However with it being focused on business, more people would be interested in what you are talking about. Also, LinkedIn is used more for business whereas Facebook is used more personally and with friends rather than colleagues. A very useful part of LinkedIn is the LinkedIn Answers which is similar to Yahoo and Google Answers, however this is based on business and has many experts in the certain field.
Twitter.. the social network all bloggers, and everyone else, seem to be using. I know very few bloggers and people that are big in “Make Money Online” that do not use twitter. Everyone seems to be on there. So how did Twitter become so successful? Well, the audience liked it. If they did not like it then they would not keep coming back, and Twitter would have no users. It started off being used to tell everybody everything you are doing, but has gradually become more used for advertising. I believe that Twitter has had a lot of success from it’s API. Even while I was writing that scentance I saw 3 new applications being “twittered” about. It makes me wonder.. would Twitter be so successful if it wasn’t for Adobe AIR?
Of course there are many other top Social Networks but these are ones I use and know more about. Please comment and write blog posts about it, I want to know your opinions!
Thank you,
Shane
You’ve answered one of the questions already in your post; admittedly it was about Twitter but it applies to all:
“Well, the audience liked it. If they did not like it then they would not keep coming back…”
How did they become successful?
Facebook is better than MySpace, it’s no wonder everyone’s got a Facebook instead of a MySpace these days…
Twitter: Facebook status updates without the profile; some people don’t need the profile they just want to tell the world what they’re doing.
Why did they succeed over the other thousands of networks there are?
Facebook: Because it was a rollout release? I’m not sure about this one because I don’t really use many networks, but between MySpace and Facebook I’d say it’s because they introduced Applications and made the user experience a lot more involved.
Twitter: See above answer (same reason, it’s lite, and it’s extremely easy to tell the world what you’re doing)
Who is their audience?
Facebook: Anyone?
Twitter: Most people looking for ways to connect with people without what they might deem the “useless profile”
Are they all trying to do the same thing and compete or are they in different niches and trying to compliment each other?
Probably trying to compliment, if everyone had a social network to themselves then we wouldn’t be networking would we?
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