Social Media

Social media are computer-mediated technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, career interests and other forms of expression via virtual communities and networks. 

GeoCities was one of the Internet's earliest social networking websites, appearing in November 1994, followed by Classmates in December 1995, Six Degrees in May 1997, Open Diary in October 1998, LiveJournal in April 1999, Ryze in October 2001, Friendster in March 2002, LinkedIn in May 2003, hi5 in June 2003, MySpace in August 2003, Orkut in January 2004, Facebook in February 2004, Yahoo! 360° in March 2005, Bebo in July 2005, Twitter in July 2006, Tumblr in February 2007, and Google+ in July 2011.

Some of the most popular social media websites are Baidu Tieba, Facebook (and its associated Facebook Messenger), Google+, Myspace, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Snapchat, Tumblr, Twitter, Viber, VK, WeChat, Weibo, WhatsApp, and Wikia. These social media websites have more than 100,000,000 registered users.

In the United States, a 2015 survey reported that 71 percent of teenagers have a Facebook account. Over 60% of 13 to 17-year-olds have at least one profile on social media, with many spending more than two hours per day on social networking sites.According to Nielsen, Internet users continue to spend more time on social media sites than on any other type of site. 

There are some common features:-

1. Social media are interactive Web       Internet-based applications.
2. User-generated content, such as text posts or comments, digital photos or videos, and data generated through all online interactions, is the lifeblood of social media.
3. Users create service-specific profiles for the website or app that are designed and maintained by the social media organization.
4. Social media facilitate the development of online social networks by connecting a user's profile with those of other individuals or groups.

Companies are increasingly using social media monitoring tools to monitor, track, and analyze online conversations on the Web about their brand or products or about related topics of interest. This can be useful in public relations management and advertising campaign tracking, allowing the companies to measure return on investment for their social media and spending, competitor-auditing, and for public engagement.

There are direct benefits of social media in the form of greater market share and increased audiences. To increase these benefits technologies that better facilitate social media marketing has been developed; an example of this technology is the development of bots.

Social media becomes effective through a process called "building social authority". One of the foundation concepts in social media has become that you cannot completely control your message through social media but rather you can simply begin to participate in the "conversation" expecting that you can achieve a significant influence in that conversation.

This is a list of the leading social networks based on number of active user accounts as of August 2017.

1. Facebook: 2,047,000,000 users
2. YouTube: 1,500,000,000 users
3. WhatsApp: 1,200,000,000 users
4. Facebook Messenger: 1,200,000,000     users
5. WeChat: 938,000,000 users
6. QQ: 861,000,000 users
7. Instagram: 700,000,000 users
8. QZone: 638,000,000 users
9. Tumblr: 357,000,000 users
10. Twitter: 328,000,000 users
11. Sina Weibo: 313,000,000 users
12. Baidu Tieba: 300,000,000 users
13. Skype: 300,000,000 users
14. Viber: 260,000,000 users
15. Snapchat: 255,000,000 users
16. Reddit: 250,000,000 users
17. Line: 214,000,000 users
18. Pinterest 175,000,000 users

There are several negative effects to social media which receive criticism, for example regarding privacy issues,information overload and Internet fraud. Social media can also have negative social effects on users. Angry or emotional conversations can lead to real-world interactions outside of the Internet, which can get users into dangerous situations. 

Many teenagers suffer from sleep deprivation as they spend long hours at night on their phones, and this could affect grades as they will be tired and unfocused in school. Social media has generated a phenomenon known as " Facebook depression", which is a type of depression that affects adolescents who spend too much of their free time engaging with social media sites. "Facebook depression" leads to problems such as reclusiveness which can negatively damage ones health by creating feelings of loneliness and low self-esteem among young people.

Social media has affected the way youth communicate, by introducing new forms of language. Abbreviations have been introduced to cut down on the time it takes to respond online. The commonly known "LOL" has become globally recognized as the abbreviation for "laugh out loud" thanks to social media.Other catchphrases and neologisms include "YOLO", which stands for "you only live once", and "BAE", which stands for "before anyone else".