In the past it was sufficient to merely have a website in order to get information out, but today there are social networks like Facebook and Twitter which make it possible for people to interact and connect with one another. These sites are known as social media and allow their users to exchange ideas, share news, participate in events and share their interests. Not only does social media connect people but is also a way of keeping people updated on news and letting them contribute to various forums or debates. Social media is also fast becoming a way of looking for information where users will search for advice on certain topics by looking at what others are sharing on social media.
The usage of social media has grown considerably and many users access their social media using their mobile phones. This has increased the need for mobile broadband and has increased the subscriptions for this service by unprecedented numbers. In July 2010 Facebook reached 500 million users, this figure shows how the rise of social media has increased over the years.
Types of Social Media
Twitter is a social media network where users can share or broadcast news, these broadcasts are known as tweets. These broadcasts can be public or private. Myspace is mainly concerned with music and entertainment while LinkedIn is mainly for career oriented people. The Google owned company Orkut is predominantly used in Brazil and India and in China a social media network Ozone is most popular. Ozone has over 380 million users and is a popular social media site. Skyrock and VKontakte are popular sites in France and Russia respectively while Cyworld is popular among the South Koreans. Other smaller social media networks such as ResearchGATE are popular among special interest groups.
YouTube is another social media network which has contributed to the rise of social media. This network enables users to watch videos generated by users according to demand and users can make comments, rate the popularity of videos and share other sources, which are all common among social media networks.
YouTube has played a big role in the increase of internet traffic and the greater demand for more bandwidth and just like games of real money blackjack it is an engaging and immersive platform that continually pulls in the crowds. YouTube makes it possible for users to generate videos and also allows people to comment on these, rate them and also to share various sources. These are all features that social media networks have. YouTube has also introduced Video ID which ensures that videos are not violating any copyright. YouTube is owned by Google and by 2010 it was showing over 2 billion videos each day. YouTube is an excellent example of a social networking platform that has and will continue to impact infrastructure with regard to the demand for bandwidth.
Facebook and Twitter
Facebook accounts for approximately 25% of web traffic and there are about 25 million status updates each day with 260 billion page views every month. There are about 100 million users accessing Facebook from their mobile phones and this accounts for a large amount of mobile traffic in the UK. Twitter also continues to grow with some of the users sending around 50 million tweets each day. Just like consoles like PlayStation all these platforms started of slowly, but have grown rapidly in recent years.
Social media is an industry that continues to grow and changes the lives of users all over the world allowing people to connect and share information and ideas.