Top Social Media Platforms

Top Social Media Platforms: The Internet is the holy grail of technological evolution as all the modern marvels that the world has witnessed in recent times have stemmed from the internet. Not only is the internet an incredible technology in itself, but it has also opened doors to many new paths that have resulted in some magnificent inventions in recent times.

Humanity is taking countless benefits out of technologies like A.I, Machine Learning, Artificial Neural Networks, and Blockchain among many others. These are technologies that are defining our future, and all of their bases come from the internet. Not only has the internet created these sophisticated technologies of the future but it has also drastically improved the ones we use currently by giving them a modern touch. Any field that you pick today will have the presence of the internet in some capacity.

Adaptability is another benefit of the internet that has enabled it to seamlessly integrate itself into many of our existing technologies. One such field that the internet has revolutionized is the field of communication. This doesn’t come as a surprise because initially, the internet was developed as a tool for communication so it was obvious that the field reaping the most benefits out of it will be communication, and the internet did that job splendidly. Thanks to the internet we have technologies like video conferencing, VoIP service, and the most important one out of all, social media. These technologies have changed the face of telecommunication and how we used to interact with people over long distances. Because not only are they cheap but have so many benefits as compared to their traditional counterparts.

What Makes Social Media so Special?

Talking about social media specifically it is probably the most used communication medium out of all. Major social media platforms have well over 2 billion users worldwide, and if we take a look at the biggest social media platform Facebook, it has close to 3 billion active users. That’s a huge number and there are quite a few reasons behind it, the major being cost.

Most social media platforms are free to join and don’t have a kind of age gender or geographical location. Thus anyone living in any part of the world can join a social media platform to connect to the world. Considering it only needs an internet connection, and since the internet has become so cheap and is available at quite an economical price, as evident by Cox internet prices, it has become very convenient for people to use these social media applications in order to remain connected with their loved ones instead of using the costly mediums like telephones. But apart from the cost factor, there are many other benefits associated with social media platforms which we are going to discuss below.  

Advantages of Social Media

The biggest advantage of social media was the one we already discussed above, since it is easily accessible to the masses it has given the power to the voices of the weak. Social media is a platform where anyone can say their mind and get their word across the world. Today social media holds so much influence that even a single post or tweet has the ability to send ripples across the world.

We have seen the power of social media recently when it was used to create one of the most significant movements against racial discrimination, yes we are talking about the Black Lives Matter movement which sprung out from just a social media post. This is another huge benefit of social media that through it people can make the world aware of the situations happening around them, anyone can do this through just a smartphone and an internet connection. 

This has transformed social media into a great platform for news. In fact, many young people only get their daily news from social media as they’re not practically into print and news media, another reason is that social media platforms are free from any governmental scrutiny and censorship neither the news the is biased towards one single entity thus making social media a free and fair platform that gives raw news. And then there is the feature to remain in touch with your friends and family and post about daily life happenings. 

Biggest Social Media Platforms

Social media has blown up in recent times and now there are many options in this space. However, we have created this list to briefly tell about some of the biggest social media platforms currently active today.

Facebook

The platform that started it all is Facebook. Although there were many prevalent before it like Myspace, Tumblr, and Orkut. But, what started as Harvard’s answer to Hot or Not (another famous social media platform) sprung into a global phenomenon. With a request-based networking model in which users sent friend requests to other users in order to become a part of their network and shared pictures, videos, and life happening with their network of “friends”. Facebook struck gold with this model and made its owner Mark Zuckerberg a billionaire. With 2.9 billion users Facebook is the single biggest platform for socializing.

YouTube  

Although not your typical social media platform, still YouTube has all the capabilities of being a news source and communication medium. This is a video-sharing platform owned by Google and is completely free to use by anyone. YouTube has a channel-based format in which every individual has their own channels on which they can upload content in video form for anyone to watch. YouTube works on an ad-based business model and also pays its content creators. So not only is this platform a great way for information sharing but has also created careers for lots of YouTubers who have made content creation on this platform their full-time job. The biggest and most popular online video streaming service YouTube has 2.5 billion active users.  

Instagram

At number three comes Instagram, an image-sharing platform. Instagram solely relies on images and short videos and is a dedicated platform on which content creators share their life in pictures with their network. Apart from following a network-based sharing model like Facebook, Instagram also has the option to keep your account open for the world to watch. Because of this feature, many celebrities are present on this platform to share their images. The major revenue of Instagram’s content creators comes from brand endorsements and modeling as the site doesn’t itself pays the users. Boosting up a user base of 1.4 billion users Instagram comes at the third spot of the biggest social media platforms.

Conclusion

Today social media has become an integral part of our life as people all over the globe use these platforms to share their memories and life moments with their friends and peers. This article sheds light on the biggest social media platforms that are being used today. However, today there are growing privacy concerns over these platforms because of these social media sites becoming increasingly advertiser-friendly and selling their user’s data to advertisers for revenue. That is why a certain level of caution should be adopted while using these social media platforms.

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