General social networks, or friends-based social networks, are those that do not focus on a particular topic or niche, but rather put the emphasis on staying connected to your friends. The most popular of these are Twitter and Facebook, but a number of popular friends-based social networks are available, including international ones.
Originally a social network for college students, Facebook has grown into one of the leading social networks in the world. In addition to networking with friends and co-workers, the Facebook platform allows users to play games with one another and even integrate other social networks like Flixster into their Facebook profile.
Integration with other apps.
Contains a built-in gaming platform.
Robust messaging, group, and chat options.
Popular site for spreading false information.
Game invites can get annoying.
Questionable business practices involving selling users’ information.
Hi5
Hi5 is a popular social network with a large international base that gets its name by allowing users to give a high five to other users. These high fives are an emotive tool where you can express happiness, cheer on a friend, or give them a slap on the back.
Focus on social gaming.
Some baseline features remain, including sharing photos and interests.
Requires users to be 18 or over.
Has become primarily a gaming site with fewer social options.
Friend requests are via emails instead of on-site.
Myspace
Long hailed as the king of social networks, Myspace has been steadily losing ground to Facebook over the past year. However, while Facebook has focused on adding utility to the social network, Myspace still reigns supreme in displaying your creative uniqueness, which makes it popular with people who like to decorate their profiles.
Focus on finding and sharing music.
Expanded to cover more areas of pop culture.
Not as popular as it once was.
Site has deleted users’ blogs without notice.
Suffered a massive data breach in 2008.
Ning
Ning is like the social network of social networks. Instead of creating your profile and adding friends, Ning allows you to create your very own social network. It’s great for workplaces that want to create a small community and families that want to keep up with each other. Learn how to create your own social network on Ning.
Focused on making your own social network.
Option to monetize.
Ability to give your network a custom domain.
More geared to site creators than users.
More about website creation than social media.
More of a micro-blogging service with social networking features, Twitter has become something of a cultural phenomenon. With the ability to receive Twitter status updates on your mobile, Twitter is able to keep people informed and rose to prominence when Barack Obama used it to keep people informed during his 2008 election campaign.
Ability to mute and block users and individual words you don’t want to see.
Easy to curate your feed to see what you want.
Encourages brevity with character limit.
Site may show you content (likes, retweets) from accounts you aren’t interested in.
Moderation system can be opaque and seemingly arbitrary.
Full of bots and fake accounts.
Twitter works via small, individual posts from users whom you can subscribe to. It’s easy to use and share tweets. Some changes to how the site works in the past few years have made it possible to see content you didn’t subscribe to, but it’s easy to mute accounts – or even individual words – if you don’t want to see them anymore.
Badoo
Badoo is one of the most popular international social networks with a large user base around the world. It’s available in almost 200 countries and offers options to connect to anyone and not just people within a radius like other dating sites.
Ability to find people based on interests.
You can do a livestream to hang out and meet new people.
Wider availability of people not based on location.
Basically a dating site.
Some features locked behind a membership.
Slightly obtuse interface.
It includes the standard “swipe-to-match” feature of sites like Bumble and Tinder. But you can also do more focused searches based on interests and do live chats to connect with other people.
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