Types & examples

 

Types of Social Media

Social media may take the form of a variety of tech-enabled activities. These activities include photo sharing, blogging, social gaming, social networks, video sharing, business networks, virtual worlds, reviews, and much more. Even governments and politicians utilize social media to engage with constituents and voters.

For individuals, social media is used to keep in touch with friends and extended family. Some people will use various social media applications to network career opportunities, find people across the globe with like-minded interests, and share their thoughts, feelings, insights, and emotions. Those who engage in these activities are part of a virtual social network.

For businesses, social media is an indispensable tool. Companies use the platform to find and engage with customers, drive sales through advertising and promotion, gauge consumer trends, and offering customer service or support.

145 minutes

The average daily social media usage of Internet users worldwide.

Social media's role in helping businesses is significant. It facilitates communication with customers, enabling the melding of social interactions on e-commerce sites. Its ability to collect information helps focus on marketing efforts and market research. It helps in promoting products and services, as it enables the distribution of targeted, timely, and exclusive sales and coupons to would-be customers. Further, social media can help in building customer relationships through loyalty programs linked to social media.

Examples of social media: 

While social media has its positive side, many point to the platform and call out negative features, likening its overuse to an addiction. Some contest it contributes to inattentiveness, stress, and jealousy. The National Center for Biotechnology Information links heavy social media use to depression. Also, many times, social media may be a conduit for misleading information and falsehoods.

The 2016 American presidential election has well-documented accounts of the impact of the ability to spread false information through the platform. Such a phenomenon leverages the power of social media, allowing anyone to reach an audience of millions with content that lacks oversight or fact-checking.

Facebook is the largest social media platform in the world, with a clear advantage over other social media, though it has similar audiences to others like Twitter and Instagram. The figures for the most popular social media websites as of January 2021 are as follows:

• Facebook (2.74 billion users)
• YouTube (2.29 billion users)
• WhatsApp (2 billion users)
• Facebook Messenger (1.3 billion users)
• Instagram (1.22 billion users)
• Whatsapp (1.21 billion users)
• TikTok (689 million users)
• QQ (617 million users)
• Douyin (600 million users)
• Sino Weibo (511 million users)

Social media info

 

What Is Social Media?

Social media is a computer-based technology that facilitates the sharing of ideas, thoughts, and information through the building of virtual networks and communities. By design, social media is Internet-based and gives users quick electronic communication of content. Content includes personal information, documents, videos, and photos. Users engage with social media via a computer, tablet, or smartphone via web-based software or applications.

While social media is ubiquitous in America and Europe, Asian countries like Indonesia lead the list of social media usage. More than 3.8 billion people use social media.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Social media is a computer-based technology that facilitates the sharing of ideas, thoughts, and information through the building of virtual networks and communities.

• The largest social media networks include Facebook, Instagram,

• Social media typically features user-generated content and personalized profiles.

• By 2023, the number of social media users in the United States is forecast to increase to approximately 257 million. 

Understanding Social Media:

Social media originated as a way to interact with friends and family but was later adopted by businesses that wanted to take advantage of a popular new communication method to reach out to customers. The power of social media is the ability to connect and share information with anyone on Earth, or with many people simultaneously.

Globally, there are more than 3.8 billion social media users. Social media is an ever-changing and ever-evolving field, with new apps such as TikTok and Clubhouse coming out seemingly every year, joining the ranks of established social networks like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram.

According to the Pew Research Center, social media users tend to be younger. Nearly 90 percent of people between the ages of 18 and 29 used at least one form of social media. Further, these users tend to be better educated and relatively wealthy, or earning over $75,000 per year.