General social networks. Comparative analysis of social networks

Internet users' choice of the most suitable social network for them is a matter of purely personal preference. After all, each such service has its own distinctive features, its advantages and disadvantages. Therefore, speculating about which social network is the most optimal or which social network is better may not be helpful. However, it is quite possible to compare their main characteristics and choose the most optimal network - one that suits you personally. The entire article below was devoted to this issue.

Choosing a social network: comparative characteristics

The main characteristics of the Facebook, Odnoklassniki and Vkontakte networks:

1. Friendly interface

The success of Internet users’ interaction with their chosen social network largely depends on the convenience of their interface. If a person gets confused in the sections and does not understand where the functions he needs are located, then most likely he will not use his page on the social network.

2. Interface

The interface of each of the most common social networks in Russia is simple. At the same time, the VKontakte interface is considered to be the most convenient, and the OK interface the most complex. It’s interesting that the VKontakte interface was almost completely “copied” from the Facebook social network a little earlier, so the advantages of the VKontakte interface can still be debated. characteristics are still a big question.

3. Functionality

The interface is only the external side. What is much more important in any social network is its capabilities and functionality. Given the constant competition between social networks, the owner of each network is trying to overtake his opponent and prepare some kind of surprise for users. However, the main functions in any network are very similar: the ability to send messages, the “wall” itself, a selection of audio and video recordings, photo albums, applications, groups and public pages.

It is worth mentioning that Facebook does not have a section with musical compositions that is so familiar to Russian users. However, this feature of FB is not an omission of the owners, but the implementation of the law that protects the copyright of musicians and singers.

4. Privacy and security of use

Surely, many have heard something about how Facebook was created under the strict control of the FBI, which means that all data from it is monitored. In fact, almost everything posted online is tracked to some degree. This means that Facebook, Odnoklassniki and Vkontakte are equally unprotected before representatives of the intelligence services.

For example, today in Russia people are fined on social networks (OK, VK) for unlawful extremism. The wording of this law in Russia on extremism is very vague, so anyone can be convicted and given a fine. RIA Novosti dated April 7, 2016 noted that Russia still leads in the huge number of complaints to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) and ranks 2nd; for several years in a row it took 1st place, but now it is 2nd Russia's place was replaced by Ukraine, and then probably temporarily.

Today, for example, if you wrote the truth on Odnoklassniki or VKontakte, which the Russian Federation does not like, you will receive a fine. If you google it, you will notice that users of these two social networks receive fines - Odnoklassniki and VKontakte, because they are considered Russian. But this does not yet apply to users of the social networks Facebook and Google; it seems that the Russian special services are not allowed on Facebook and Google to turn around and apply their unlawful law on extremism. And most recently, the Russian authorities decided to block the largest professional social network LinkedIn, due to the fact that the personal data of Russian members of this social network is not stored on the territory of the Russian Federation. Such first steps could lead to the blocking of Google, YouTube, and other Internet resources that did not provide Russia with control keys.

And if we talk about the protection of personal data, then it is Facebook that has clear advantages. This Zuckerberg social network is particularly strict in protecting users' confidential data. Any owner of a Facebook page can clearly define the circle of people who have access to basic information on the page or even completely protect their page from strangers. You can often hear that the personal pages of users of such social networks as OK, VK, Mail are hacked every now and then. But you won’t hear this from users of social networks Facebook and Google; most likely, without additional explanations, you understand why?! It's all about privacy and security of use.

5. Audience

If ordinary users most often look only for the pages of their friends, then page owners for promoting bands are more concerned about characteristics such as traffic and target audience. The Odnoklassniki and Contact networks are services that are widespread among residents of Russia and the countries of the former USSR. Facebook is a social network of international importance.

6. You can easily delete a page on Facebook

7. Facebook protects against spam

There is an incredible amount of spam on VKontakte and OK. These include annoying invitations to applications and groups, frequent hacking of accounts, spam messages on the wall, in personal messages and groups. This inconvenience often forces users to close their profiles, which itself defeats the purpose of social media. On Facebook there is much less spam and closed profiles.

8. Home page

On Facebook, the main page is the news feed of friends of the owner of the VKontakte page, but the main page was set to its own profile, which is not convenient for everyone.

9. Facebook is more functional

Facebook has so many functions that it’s simply impossible to understand them quickly. This is why many people find it incomprehensible and boring. But you just have to spend a little more time getting to know this social network, and all the difficulties are resolved on their own and the huge functionality of the network is revealed to the new user, which makes Facebook especially convenient and interesting.

Facebook has a variety of wonderful features. Ability to change access to publications. Possibility to publish retroactively. It's all very convenient. For example, we were at an event, but received photos only a month later. They can be added to the chronicle based on the date of the event. And when you look at it in a year, you will see exactly when this event took place. The post is placed in chronological order.
For example, you can also transfer your posts from other social networks. By publishing them in a timeline with access only for yourself and the time of their publication on the social network from which you are transferring. That is, the chronology is preserved, but they won’t clutter up anyone’s feed. Later, you can change the access and they can be seen when you access the page.
Another very convenient thing. If you edited the publication or deleted it altogether, then it will also change in reposts. This is not the case in either VK or G+.

But in FB it is not yet possible to edit publications from other users in a group, as is the case in VK if you have admin rights. It wouldn’t hurt if FB were more adaptive and had wider designs, for example, the search would be mega-expanded and convenient, like in VK, + video and music and the ability to sort. But we’ll wait to see what else we can do...

10. Millions of applications

Countless selection of applications - from gaming to cross-posting all the latest posts of a blog of interest. Here every user can find something that interests him, while most of the Odnoklassniki and VKontakte applications are intended only for entertainment.

11. Facebook is open to other sites

Facebook gives away user traffic to third-party sites without fear. This confirms that in 2010 it was able to overtake the Google search engine in terms of the number of clicks to sites. VKontakte and OK in every possible way prevent traffic from moving to other sites.

12. On Facebook, information comes first hand.

We all have something that is especially dear and dear to us. Modern musicians, favorite films, famous actors, brands and manufacturing companies, Internet sites of cultural trends and people dear to us. VKontakte has groups for this purpose, in which people with similar interests exchange information. This could be quite interesting. But on Facebook you can find real pages or communities of celebrities, where all the news is published by the stars themselves or their trusted representatives. It is from there that all the information then spreads to other social networks.

13. Facebook has a convenient chat

Constantly looking for the “private messages” item in the menu may not be very convenient. On Facebook, in the lower right part of the screen there is a very convenient chat with a list of all available contacts, which makes communication especially easy and enjoyable.

14. Facebook has a lite and mobile version

This feature can make using the social network much easier when the quality of the Internet leaves much to be desired. These very light and small versions will allow you to stay in touch both in the city and beyond.

15. Facebook has an iPhone app and other nice features

Now many young people have decided to get a brand new modern iPhone. Any owner of this device knows that it is more convenient to access the social network through a special application. Facebook today has the most modern and convenient “native” program that helps you do anything on your page by accessing it through a special application installed on your smartphone. Of course, there is also a similar iPhone application for Vkontakte, but the ease of use of this application still leaves much to be desired.

16. Facebook is communication without borders

To date, more than 300 million users have registered on Facebook, and their number continues to grow. Without a shadow of a doubt, we can say that Facebook is considered the most popular social network for communicating with users from all over the world. This is facilitated by the fact that Facebook’s functionality has already been translated into all the major languages ​​of the world and continues to add new ones.

You can install an automatic online translator directly on the Facebook website and then read news in any language. To set up automatic translation into your language, you need to click on “Settings” in the upper right corner, select the “Settings” - “Language” section. And set the language into which you want to translate comments, messages, etc. After this, at the bottom of each message and comment, you will have a “Show translation” button on your viewing pages. See the pictures below to see how to make these settings in practice:

17. Facebook is your universal account and pass.

Nowadays, an increasing number of new web services can use a Facebook account to facilitate authorization. This saves the user from filling out boring forms for a long time and makes the use of resources that are interesting to him and especially convenient.

18. Facebook is for responsible adults

VKontakte - for children and teenagers. The time has come when VKontakte became like a playground for school-age children. Whereas adults and responsible people increasingly choose Facebook for themselves.

Of course, each Internet user can remain unconvinced when deciding which social network is best for him. There simply cannot be a definite answer. And if, at first, it’s difficult to decide which service will be the most convenient, you can try to create a page on each of the 3 social networks. This will greatly expand opportunities for communication and other interactions with the outside world.

But our OPTIMUS LIFE team, of all social networks, considers Facebook to be the priority and optimal.

Which social network is your choice and why? Write in the comments below.

A typical PR campaign on social networks includes several sequential stages. Initially, it is necessary to develop a communication strategy based on the data obtained during monitoring. The communications strategy should include a list of work necessary to achieve the goal of the PR campaign, desired results, planned budget, rules for attracting and interacting with the audience.

At the next stage, a so-called brand platform is created - a set of communities on social networks that ensure interaction of the brand with the target audience. If a brand works for several target audiences at once, you will need to create a separate community for each of them.

After communities are created, you will have to take care of filling them with content. News, videos, photographs - all this is necessary to maintain the audience's interest in the group and maintain communication. At the same time, branded content should account for no more than a third of the total volume of community content, another third should be allocated to fun content and a third to useful content.

The success of any social media strategy is ultimately determined by its ability to connect with people on an immediate, human level. In linguistics there is a phenomenon known as "code switching". That is, when a person switches from one language to another and back during one conversation. The significance of this phenomenon applied in social networks is large-scale. Social media is slowly but surely blurring the line between personal and professional. By linking this to “code switching,” we get a new approach to brand behavior on social media.

The fact is that SMM does not use an advertising format. The main mechanism of interaction is communication on topics that are relevant to the user and the distribution of content that is interesting to him. Naturally, both communication and content contain a mandatory promotional link, but unlike advertising, they are valuable to the user.

Creating a community or group is available on most social networks, most often this function is free. You can invite friends and other people interested in the company’s products or products to the created groups. Next, you should take care of organizing communication between users in the group: create interesting topics, through the creation of artificial profiles, imitate a discussion between real users. Interested users can be brought in by searching for interests in similar groups of other services. Give as complete answers to user questions as possible.

Creation of public pages (fan page). Promotion methods on such pages are reminiscent of promotion in communities and groups.

Using media content (pictures, audio, video), where you can insert the brand name, website address, etc. The most popular network for this is YouTube.

Targeted advertising - aimed at a specific category of users. The most common method of paid promotion on social networks. This can include advertising for a specific city, country, for people with a certain age and interests.

Conducting competitions, promotions, discounts for the target audience with prizes for the winners.

VKontakte (VK)

VKontakte (http://vk.com) is a social network for fast and convenient communication between people around the world. The goal of VKontakte is to remain the most modern, fastest and most aesthetic way of communicating on the network at every single moment. The site has more than 290 million registered users. More than 69,000,000 visitors visit the site every day. More than 3,000,000,000 pages are opened daily. Approximately 65% ​​of visitors live in Russia. More than 56% of site users are over 25 years old.

VKontakte evokes positive emotions among its visitors, because most often they use the resource for communication and entertainment. This creates high user loyalty.

There are two main formats for working on VKontakte.

The second option is to “transfer” users to an external Internet resource. This option is suitable for companies that carry out basic transactions (ordering goods or services) on their website, and not through social networks. If the site is informational (blog or thematic portal), visitors from social networks read materials about the company and products. And in this case, the community on the social network is an additional source of traffic for the main project.

Which option to choose depends on the initial conditions. Both formats are valid and can produce results. The second option is especially relevant for those who make money on their websites by selling advertising, in particular for all kinds of media. Sometimes formats are mixed: for example, all information materials are posted in the community, but sales are carried out only on the website.

Any project on VKontakte solves two main tasks: increasing profits and feedback from clients. One way or another, it all comes down to this. On the other hand, the task of increasing profits can be solved both directly - direct sales of goods or services, and indirectly - by increasing brand awareness, growing its reputation and, accordingly, overall loyalty to the company.

The functionality of the group is basically not great. Through the "Discussions" section, you can create a small forum on a given topic for community members/subscribers, and the group's "Wall" serves as an information platform where group administrators and moderators can post informational and entertaining content. Another possibility is sending out invitations to subscribers and other users of the social network to events that take place in real time and organized by the company that owns the group.

In addition to the fact that VKontakte allows direct sales, any community has the opportunity to make repeat sales. To some extent, working with a group in modern conditions is reminiscent of e-mail marketing. Only in the case of the latter, people receive news to their email, and in social networks, contact with subscribers in the news feed is constant. But the essence is the same: a community (base of potential clients) is formed and constant interaction with them is maintained. Unlike the audience that comes from search engines and most often does not return, people on social networks are constantly in touch, as they become members of the community and receive news about all new publications on its wall.

In addition, the community can serve as “technical support”. As practice shows, many users find it more convenient to ask a question through the community than to call a number that still needs to be found out, or to “reach out” to an online consultant on the site, if there is one. With the help of properly structured communication with customers, you can significantly reduce negativity and increase overall loyalty to the company.

Thanks to the “community statistics” section, you can always find out about the community’s audience and its activity. This section has several tabs. In the “Attendance” tab you can see the number of unique visitors and views. There is data for a day and a month, plus a lot of additional factors: gender and age of visitors; geography (country and city); referral sources (where visitors came to your community from); the number of visitors who left or joined the group; what sections visitors viewed: videos, photo albums, discussions, audio recordings.

The next “Reach” tab is for users who have viewed community posts on the “wall” or in the “My News” section. There is also additional data on gender, age and geography.

And in the “Activity” tab the following data is presented: how many users “liked” the post, that is, clicked the “Like” button; how many users reposted, that is, clicked the “Tell Friends” button; how many users mentioned the group page; how many users hid the group from the news; total number of comments left; In addition, this tab contains information about the number of comments on specific sections: discussions, photos or videos. The feedback graph is also presented here. It takes into account not only user actions performed directly on the wall of a group or page, but also the entire further path of the message. If a user posts a link to a message on their page using the “tell friends” function, the reaction of other users to this copy is also taken into account.

Any project can be present on VKontakte in three main formats: public page (public), group or profile. Each format has its own characteristics.

The main differences between a public page and a group are their functionality. In publics, content comes first. Immediately below the community description there is a microblog. And unlike groups in publics, there is no block with photographs or a news block above the “wall”.

On public pages, users can "suggest" their posts using the "Suggest News" feature. In some cases, this eliminates the need to run your own community, since users generate the content themselves.

An extremely important nuance: the public page is in the block of interesting pages on the user’s page. Essentially, these are five advertising banners in the most prominent place on your profile. If the account owner subscribes to a public page and regularly visits it or reposts public posts from the news feed, the public will be permanently in this block.

Unlike public pages in groups, the main emphasis is on communication between users. This is facilitated by:

1. The “Discussion” block, which can be pinned above the “wall” of the group, immediately after the news block. This is analogous to a forum.

2. In a group, visitors can communicate directly on the “wall”. For example, ask your questions. This increases the communication effect, but also the amount of spam.

3. In the group, in the “News” block, there is a wiki markup, which allows you to create a beautiful additional menu.

SMM specialists cannot come to a single decision when choosing between a group or a public page. For example, Dmitry Rumyantsev in his work “Business Promotion on VKontakte” writes that the most effective for most niches as of July 2013 is promoting a public page. ADamir Khalilov in his book “Marketing in Social Networks” argues that there is no fundamental difference format to use, no, since there are not many differences in functionality. But users are more accustomed to groups and are more willing to join them.

Standard text and graphic block with payment for impressions or for transitions;

Exclusive banner 90*160 for premium brands with payment for impressions;

Offers with payment according to the CPA model;

The average lifespan of one ad on a social network is 3 days.

Also, since August 2014, VKontakte has allowed advertising through verified communities. The main feature is mandatory pre-moderation for all advertising posts. According to Roem.ru, checking advertising posts from the exchange will help achieve uniformity in advertising publications. This, in turn, will help advertisers achieve a predictable effect from advertising, and administrators will publish advertisements in a format familiar to users.

New advertisements cannot be added endlessly; there are some restrictions. Firstly, this is rule point No. 5:

“Creating more than three ads aimed at the same audience and advertising the same object, or creating several absolutely identical ads, including within different advertising campaigns, is regarded as an attempt to spam.”

Odnoklassniki (OK)

The prototype site Classmates.com was launched on March 4, 2006, and immediately became very popular. The emphasis was placed on the audience who have recently entered the university but do not want to lose touch with their school past. The secret of success was that parents of teenagers quickly became hooked on finding their classmates whom they had not seen for decades. This is the viral effect.

Currently, 220 million people are registered on Odnoklassniki, and the monthly audience is approximately 41 million. On average, a user spends 17 minutes a day on the site. And the predominant audience by age criterion: women (55%) 25-54 years old (67%).

The developers of the social network “Odnoklassniki.ru” position their resource as a platform for finding classmates and friends in order to correspond with them, look at their photos and organize meetings with them. A not very wide range of functions, however, still allows people in our overly busy times to maintain relationships with friends and acquaintances, keep abreast of the events of their lives and see (from photographs) the current state of the person of interest.

The most common types of activities on Odnoklassniki are publishing statuses and messages. Users also love audio and especially visual content: they post photos, comment on friends’ pictures, and give ratings. In addition, popular activities on Odnoklassniki include watching videos and, of course, social games.

The advertising targeting capabilities of this social network are in many ways similar to any other network. Just like on VKontakte, media advertising on the Odnoklassniki website is placed on a paid basis. Before the advertisement appears in front of users, it is moderated by resource employees. The process takes about five business days.

Promotion of a group takes much longer and requires more effort than on VKontakte. This is due to less functionality available in groups on the Odnoklassniki network.

Odnoklassniki strictly follows a policy of deactivating unauthorized or illegal methods of promoting groups, so success can only be achieved through permitted content and purchasing advertising from donors

There are two types of groups in Odnoklassniki: groups for business and interest groups. In groups you can find useful information, find friends with similar interests, and also make purchases. Brand groups can gain “official status”, which can protect them from clones.

The main source of advertising on Odnoklassniki is the news feed. Unlike competitors, Odnoklassniki decided to limit the number of publications from one community per day so that the feed does not turn into a dense stream of content where it is impossible to concentrate attention at all. This practice made it possible to slow down “nimble” community administrators and consistently maintain a high share of user attention on an advertising post. Today, the feed algorithm is configured in such a way that each group has sixteen posts that will definitely appear in the feed of the members of this group. After the sixteenth post, a certain filter is turned on, which analyzes the feed of each specific user and, in the future, either allows or does not allow the post there. Both the seventeenth and eighteenth posts will also appear in the users’ feed, but not all 100% of the group members will see them.

The number of user invitations to a particular group is also limited, but this indicator is “floating” and depends on many different factors. This was done to combat spam.

The difference from other platforms is the nature of the brand’s interaction with the audience. Typically, followers are very active in all brand-related activities because they know the brand and use it in their real life. Odnoklassniki has a mass market audience, and the brand needs to adapt to its interests and preferences. To promote on Odnoklassniki, it is more effective to use interactive and game mechanics: games, surveys and competitions.

Today, on the social network Odnoklassniki, there are more than 1,000 groups with over 1,000 participants. This is a very average value, because there are tens of groups that have more than 1 million followers. These are groups related to cooking, coffee brands and, for example, our official Odnoklassniki group (2.7 million users). At the same time, for several years the M&M’S brand group has remained the leader in the number of subscribers on the social network.

Odnoklassniki also provides free statistics on groups with the ability to download data in the form of graphs. For example, you can see information about the number of users who visited the group, their involvement, demand for content, and you can also find out where they came from to the group, demographics and geography of users, analytics of content popularity in groups.

There are many types of advertising tools in Odnoklassniki, the most accessible of which include the following: targeted advertising (text and graphic blocks), media advertising (banner, video advertising, non-standard projects for solving media problems) and advertising in groups.

In addition, there are mobile advertising. Mobile advertising is native, that is, it is presented directly in the news feed. On the one hand, it does not take up static space on the screen, on the other hand, compared to the web version, it takes up a larger percentage of the screen area (this significantly increased the CTR of advertisements). There are a huge number of users who access Odnoklassniki mainly from mobile phones. Currently, the daily audience of the mobile version of Odnoklassniki is 16.5 million visitors.

Another option for promoting a brand/company is a branded application and posting it on the portal. The cost of placement is “conditionally free” - 140 thousand rubles per month, which is spent on media and/or targeted advertising, and the placement itself, it turns out, costs nothing.

According to the study, the majority of My World users are Russians (58.7%), and every fifth is a resident of Kazakhstan (19%). The third largest number is occupied by Ukrainians (8.7%).

Among My World users there are more women (64%) than men (36%). The core of the audience is young men and women aged 18–34: 43% of them on the social network.

Users play more games, post content and comment in groups, and communicate less through chats and messages. At the same time, a user who starts buying something in games spends on average more on games than the same user on other social networks.

The activity of the MM audience is 2.5 times higher than in similar groups on other social networks.

According to Artem Ovechkin, development director of the online marketing agency Matik, there are several reasons for this:

1. Company budgets

3. Lack of PR on the part of MM

4. Competition with social networks VK and Odnoklassniki that are similar in audience composition.

Most medium and small companies do not allocate the largest budgets for SMM. Monthly expenses for this area range from 25 to 60 thousand rubles. Obviously, with such amounts it is impossible to qualitatively cover all social networks, so the matter does not go further than FaceBook and VKontakte.

Of course, only large companies can spread their corporate “tentacles” widely, but even they are expanding their reach through Twitter, Odnoklassniki, Youtube and only lastly look towards “My World”. Among the social network buttons that hang on many sites: “My World” icons are rare.

The second reason is the insufficient “promotion” of this social network, coupled with limited budgets and a generally test-like attitude towards SMM on the part of most companies. They reason like this: why spend money on “second-tier” social networks when not everything is clear with the first?

Among the advantages, it can be noted that there are managers who work personally with each specific group. If a group has good content, then it has the opportunity to promote it for free - something other social networks don’t have.

My World also adheres to the policy that there should not be two identical groups, and therefore clones are deleted.

My World hosts media advertising and also has a wide selection of Target options. In addition, you can place advertisements in video pre-rolls. Moreover, MM can give initial traffic for free, raise it in the catalog or in the “We recommend” block. Of course, this applies to good products with high retention. The same applies to groups with interesting, regularly updated content.

The ability to create groups in MM appeared only in May 2013. Today, My World has hundreds of thousands of communities uniting users by interests. To make searching easier, there is a catalog that breaks down all communities into thematic groups.

Audience: more than 800 million users. There are more than 9.3 million users in Russia. The monthly increase is 20 million people (worldwide). If Facebook were a country, it would be the 3rd most populous country after China and India.

There are many Facebook users: businessmen, entrepreneurs, marketers; bloggers, geeks, webmasters; people who have friends abroad.

Main activities: reading comments (68%); chat (62%); commenting (59%); viewing/reading recommended (38%); apps, videos (33%); visiting brand pages (12%).

Many brands use Facebook groups for: employee team communication, customer feedback, idea exchange, word of mouth effect.

On pages, the administrator, as a rule, communicates with subscribers on behalf of the company, hiding under the “page title,” while groups involve a more intimate conversation, where the user immediately sees who he is dealing with. In addition to publications, there is a built-in search, file sharing, and convenient moderation.

A distinctive tool is the banner (cover) at the top, it can display the brand logo, or, if you do not load the banner, then profile photos of the group members will be displayed instead.

Other tools include: events, files, notifications (user activity in the group). In the group, any participant can upload files up to 25 MB.

You can set up a group so that no member can invite other users without the administrator's knowledge. The main point of groups is precisely to establish closer connections between users united by the same interest.

In addition, the group can serve as an information collector: for example, you can launch an event, publish it in the group and invite participants to register, leaving contact information (for example, an email to receive a reminder or additional information).

Social networks covered in the article, in order
1. VK
2. fb


5. Twitter
6. periscope
7. telegram
8. ask

SCHEME FOR DESCRIPTION OF EACH SOCIAL NETWORK

• goals, mission, who and where the owners are from, how and when they were born, dynamics and prospects;
• audience: geography, languages, age, interests, number of users, social status;
• features: pages, communities, groups, messages, video, audio, applications...;
• opportunities for people to earn money: how, what people earn from, HOW MUCH they earn per month, how much time it takes;
• promotion opportunities and promotion opportunities;
• business opportunities, company advertising;
• summary, the main distinguishing features of this network from others, what is unique.

Social network In contact with was founded in 2006 by programmer Pavel Durov. Initially, the goal of the project was to provide an opportunity for university students and graduates to communicate in a single network, and registration on it was possible only by special invitation and exclusively under their real name and surname. Immediately after registration became possible for everyone, the social network began to gain momentum. By 2007, VKontakte’s audience was already 3 million people, and the site itself ranked second in popularity on the Runet.

During its existence, VKontakte has undergone great changes and changed owners several times. Initially, together with Pavel Durov, the company’s shares belonged to father and son Mikhail and Vyacheslav Mirilashvili, as well as programmer and entrepreneur Lev Liev. In 2011, Mail .Ru Group acquired 39.99% of VKontakte shares, and in 2014 it became the sole owner, purchasing 100%.

Now VKontakte continues to grow and develop, still surpassing the most popular Russian social networks Odnoklassniki and Moi Mir in the number of users. There is an ongoing trend of chasing Facebook.

VKontakte audience

By 2017, the number of VKontakte users reached 410 million. About 80 million people visit the site every day. The geography of users is quite extensive and covers countries such as Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan and other members of the CIS. There are not many users from European countries, but they exist. The same goes for Americans.

Due to the large geographical dispersion of VKontakte users, there is a function for selecting the interface language. The service currently works with 85 languages, including the languages ​​of almost all nationalities living in Russia.

Total: the VK audience is mostly young, Russian-speaking, the topics of the pages correspond to the interests of such an audience - music, entertainment, games...

VKontakte features

If initially VKontakte offered its users only the functions of exchanging personal messages, searching for people, profile settings, choosing a place of study and adding photos, now the possibilities have expanded significantly. Now, in addition to those listed, the social network offers such functions as:

• – creation and management of groups and public pages;
• – use of various applications and games;
• – saving your favorite photos to a separate album on your page;
• – forwarding personal messages from one user to another;
• – creating group chats;
• – listening and adding music;
• – viewing and adding videos.

How to make money on VKontakte

1. Groups and public pages. Which can be used in different ways. The best thing is to advertise in your community. But there is a condition here - the community must be well-promoted and have many subscribers, otherwise no one will simply want to place their advertisements with you. Therefore, if you like this option, you should start promoting the group.
   Another way to make money through the community is to create an online store. If you manage to attract at least a small circle of clients, you can start earning good money. The VKontakte online store is a profitable business, since you don’t have to pay for the content of the site and the social network’s audience is huge, which increases the chances of getting a large number of customers.
   The third option for making money through groups is an affiliate program, that is, posting a link to a product or service in your community. If you use this link to go to the site and order a product, you will be awarded a certain percentage of the proceeds each time.

With the help of VKontakte communities you can earn up to several tens of thousands of rubles

With the help of VKontakte communities, you can earn up to several tens of thousands of rubles, depending on the specifics of the advertised product and the number of community subscribers.

1. Work as a moderator or community admin. Creators of groups and public pages with large audiences are often looking for people who would manage these same communities. If you are well versed in VKontakte and have certain skills in working with text and photo editors, there is an opportunity to become a moderator or admin of the community and earn money. As a rule, everyone has different rates. If you want and are diligent, you can earn up to 15-20 thousand rubles a month.
2. Working as a web designer. If you have design skills and good taste, community design will become a source of income. Here, too, the condition for getting a job is promotion, but in this case, oneself. Typically, the work of a web designer specifically for the VKontakte group is estimated at 5-10 thousand rubles, depending on the complexity of the design.
3. Application development. This is perhaps the most difficult way to make money on VKontakte, because only experienced programmers can develop an application that would be popular among users. But, if, nevertheless, you succeeded, it is quite possible that your earnings will reach tens of thousands per month.

How to make friends and subscribers on VKontakte

VKontakte users often have a need or simply a desire to make more friends. This is necessary, for example, for online trading or for advertising. You also always want to get as many likes as possible for your posts and photos, but not everyone is able to quickly get as many people as friends as they want, or a large number of likes. This is where special services for promotion come to the rescue, which subsequently become an excellent promotion tool.

The most popular and inexpensive service today, which allows you to make friends, reposts, subscribers to a group, likes, comments, gifts for a low fee, or earn likes in the system itself, and then exchange them for any service.

You can also get likes, friends or subscribers on:

• – a well-promoted combine harvester;
• – very simple, for some reason people who work via a smartphone/tablet like it;
• – service exchange, andhas slightly different interfaces for ordinary users and for advertisers.

In addition to using special services, page promotion can be achieved for a fee by contacting people whose activity is specifically assistance in promotion. The disadvantage of this method is its high cost.

In addition to services, there are programs that work from a computer:

• – business combine for VK. There is a free version. The author is a fan of his work.
• – sending out advertisements, VKontakte messages, conducting dialogues.
• – promotion of VKontakte groups and accounts.
• – a parser for finding your target audience on VKontakte.
• – the best analogue of VkBot (VK bot), in many ways superior to it. Lots of functions, support via toll-free line 8-800.

You can try to promote the page yourself. On VKontakte this is not so easy, but you can, for example, join groups where users add each other as friends. This is a kind of mutual PR.

Business opportunities on VKontakte

As mentioned earlier, VKontakte can be used for various purposes, including making a profit, both a social one for a ready-made business, and for starting one. In both cases, VKontakte communities will come to the rescue.

An existing business can be expanded and promoted by creating a public page where you can sell products or simply introduce a potential client to the range, if we are talking about trading, or offer your services. An excellent addition to this would be to order advertising in other large communities or on pages of users with a large number of friends and subscribers.

You can also start your own small business within VKontakte by opening the same group, but you should definitely think about promoting it from the beginning.

Thanks to ample opportunities not only for communication, but also for having a good time, and, if desired, making a profit, VKontakte has remained popular among users for many years. It is in the thoughtful organization of the service that the secret of its long-term success lies.

Facebook

Facebook- the very first, and, to date, the most popular social network in the world, founded by Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg on February 4, 2004.
Initially, there was no talk of any social network, because at that time they didn’t even know what it was. The fact is that in the school where Zuckerberg studied, there was a special book called The Photo Address Book, where photographs and contacts of all students were stored, and which, due to the long name, the students themselves renamed The Facebook. Upon entering Harvard, Zuckerberg discovered that there was no such reference book at the university, which caused him bewilderment.

The future billionaire approached the university management with a request to create something similar, but was refused. And then Zuckerberg decided to take matters into his own hands and founded Facebook, a site where Harvard students could communicate. Already in the first month, half of all students registered on Facebook, then students from other universities joined them. In 2005, Facebook ceased to be a social network only for students - now anyone could register here.

After the number of accounts on the social network exceeded 50 million, Mark Zuckerberg began to receive offers to sell it, but everyone was refused. Only Bill Gates managed to buy a 1.6% stake in the project, paying $260 million. After this, the billionaire registered on the social network, and then entered into an agreement with Zuckerberg, according to which Microsoft advertisements were placed on Facebook.

But let's not forget that, perhaps, most of the success is due to the attention in 2005 to the then startup of venture entrepreneurs, billionaires Peter Thiel (PayPal, XSpace, Palantir) and his partner, who noticed the project among hundreds of others and invested heavily in it . According to Peter Thiel, they spent a year studying the market and related information on the topic of social networks, and at the time of the meeting with Zuckerberg they had already made a decision.

Facebook audience

By 2017, the number of Facebook accounts reached 1.71 billion. Of these, a little more than a billion use the mobile version of the social network. Even taking into account that some users have multiple accounts, the number of people registered on Facebook is almost 25% of the world's population.

At the same time, the accounts belong to people of different ages and social statuses, but this is where most of the accounts of world movie and music stars, deputies and politicians are concentrated.

Due to the large geographical dispersion, the interface language can be used in almost any language.

The number of people registered on Facebook is almost 25% of the world's population.

Facebook Features

Today, Facebook is not just a site where you can exchange messages. The possibilities of the social network are wide. Here you can:

• – create and participate in interest groups;
• – search for acquaintances and add them as friends;
• - play games;
• – communicate live;
• – communicate using audio messages;
• – send photos, videos, music and documents to any user;
• – upload photos and videos to your page.

How to run a business and make money on Facebook

Since Facebook is the site with the largest concentration of people, it is clear that it has long been used not only for communication and entertainment. A social network, like nothing else, will help you earn money and promote your own business.

The most popular options for earning money on Facebook:

1. Place links to affiliate programs on your page. You can find them yourself, but if you have a lot of people as friends, some online sellers or those who want more sales for their product can offer similar things for money.
2. Place paid advertising on your page.
3. Become a contributor on Facebook Posts Market(“Recording Market”). Or Facebook Fanpages Market.

These methods will allow you to earn from 5 thousand rubles and more per month.

Options to make money on Facebook with your own business:

1. Create a public page for selling any goods or services, that is, a kind of online store.
2. Create a public page to advertise your business, which operates outside the network.

Facebook in 2016/2017 introduced a huge number of innovations and revolutionary tools for fine-grained audience segmentation, providing users with unprecedented marketing opportunities. The dynamics of change are amazing, improvements appear every week.

Methods of promotion and promotion on Facebook

Promoting a page on Facebook is possible both independently and with the help of third-party programs. To gain a large number of friends, you need to either send as many applications yourself as possible, or make your page so interesting that users themselves will add you. The more friends you have, the more likes you will get on your photos.

If you don’t want to waste time, but have the opportunity to spend money, you can use special services to increase friends and likes. There are quite a lot of them now and some offer their services at very reasonable prices and with high results.

These are, for example, the ones mentioned above, plus.

Summary

Facebook in the Russian-language segment today is ahead of VKontakte in terms of audience growth, and in terms of business and earnings opportunities it is even more ahead. VK is already saturated with advertising, and FB is an unplowed field, plus a rapid increase in new participants.

An important point is that the most solvent audience - people 30-45 years old, entrepreneurs, politicians, experts, IT specialists - “live” on Facebook.

Since its inception, Facebook has topped the list of social networks for good reason. It was he who became the beginning for all other similar projects and this is precisely his main difference from them. Well, we wish our native VK not to lag behind, but to catch up and surpass its competitor.

Instagram

Now about Instagram Perhaps, only those people to whom civilization has never reached, that is, the aborigines, do not know :) But few people can imagine that this project was created in just a few weeks by American student Kevin Systrom. He was simply delirious with the idea of ​​​​creating his own application that would “blow up” the Network, and even began working on the Burbn project, which combines some of the functions of social networks. At the same time, another programmer, Michael Krieger, was working on creating his application, and Kevin, being his acquaintance, suggested that Krieger start working together. They began work on Burbn, but soon realized that the project was doomed to fail.

The idea of ​​Instagram came to Kevin Simstrom unexpectedly. He realized that he needed a service that could transform even the most unattractive photographs and make them beautiful. On the same day, he created the first Instagram filter, and he worked on others again with Krieger.

The first version of Instagram appeared in the App Store on October 6, 2010, and massive downloads began immediately. Already in the first days, the number of downloads reached 25 thousand, and the creators realized that Instagram was accepted by users, and, therefore, more people were needed to ensure its life. Thus, the Instagram team expanded to 5 people.

The fact that in April 2012 the project was bought by Facebook for a billion dollars proves how popular it had already gained at that time. Today, Instagram is a service that allows you not only to upload photos and videos, but also to conduct live broadcasts, like on Periscope, to run your own business and earn money.

Instagram audience

Probably only the laziest are not registered on Instagram. If we say that his audience is the whole world, this will probably not be an exaggeration. The application today is adapted for all existing operating systems and is popular in almost every country. The number of registered accounts exceeded 500 million by 2017. For the convenience of users, Instagram offers the ability to use the service in several dozen languages.

Instagram features

During its existence, Instagram has changed a lot. Today it offers its users such features as:

– uploading videos up to 60 seconds long;

– processing photos and videos with filters;

– conducting live broadcasts;

– restricting access to your page;

- conducting personal correspondence.

How to run a business and make money on Instagram

Thanks to its popularity and the large number of people on its expanses, Instagram has become a service. Options for earning money in the service:

1. Creating a trading page.
2. Placing advertisements on your page.
3. Placing links to products on your page, when clicking on them and purchasing this product, the user receives a percentage of the sale.
4. Promotion of your business, which is conducted outside of Instagram, by notifying its users. To do this, a page is created for this or that organization, which provides complete information about it and its services.

Promotion and promotion on Instagram

Every Instagram user strives to have as many followers as possible, or to ensure that their photos receive a lot of likes. If you follow a few simple tips, then this is quite possible:

1. Fill out your profile with interesting information about yourself.
2. Add photos and videos to your page more often.
3. Choose an attractive avatar.
4. Put hashtags under photos and videos.

If you do business on Instagram, then the best ways for people to know about you are:

1. Follow as many people as possible.
2. Give likes.
3. Indicate information about yourself in the header.

There are also paid ways to boost and promote on Instagram. This:

– the use of special programs and services that also provide promotion services for money.

The first method is more suitable for business accounts, and the second - for ordinary users.

When using promotion services for serious income, they do not use mass services, but those specializing exclusively in Instagram promotion, fortunately, the prices are comparable:

• - the service specializes in promotion on Instagram. Emphasizes real work - live subscribers, promotion and not cheating and everything that brings results in hard cash, and not just beautiful numbers of likes and subscribers to satisfy our EGO.
• - an analogue of Instaplus, only almost half the price and more modern. Based on our statistics, services with such functionality keep prices so low at the stage of gaining an initial mass of users and breaking away from competitors. Then they raise prices. So take advantage of the moment.
• DOINSTA is a proven and polished service for automated (with a minimum of manual labor) work with subscriptions, unsubscribes, and likes. Recently the service has been unstable, we recommend others: , .

Summary

The uniqueness of Instagram is its versatility and constantly updated updates to the system. The owners of the service do everything to ensure that interest in it does not subside, and they are doing a great job.

The service is developing very dynamically; it is seriously considered as a source of attracting customers in many niches.

Classmates

Classmates is the second most popular social network in Russia. It was founded back in 2006 by programmer Albert Popkov and designer Dmitry Utkin, and was not at all perceived by the creators as some kind of major project, but in a short time the social network gained great popularity. Having found investors and developed Odnoklassniki, the creators of the social network were able to ensure that within six months the number of registered accounts reached 4 million. But still, the owners’ investments were not enough to maintain the project and in 2010 they decided to sell Odnoklassniki to Mail .Ru Group. By that time, over 45 million users were registered on the network.

Odnoklassniki audience

By 2017, about 300 million accounts from more than 100 countries were already registered on Odnoklassniki. The social network is viewed in 13 languages. Almost the entire Russian-speaking population of Europe, America and Australia is registered on Odnoklassniki and visits the site regularly.

Odnoklassniki features

In addition to messaging, Odnoklassniki allows you to:

• – create and communicate in groups;
• – play games and spend time in exciting applications;
• – give each other virtual gifts;
• - listen to music;
• - watch the video;
• – add photos;
• – restrict access to your page.

How to run a business and make money on Odnoklassniki

Today Odnoklassniki is actively used to make money online. The opportunities for running your own business and making money here are quite extensive. People who have their own business offline, but want to attract more clients, can do this using a social network. To do this you can:

1. Create a group dedicated to your business where potential clients can learn about you and your services or products.
2. Notify about your services or products on your page.
3. Order advertising from popular groups.

You can earn money on Odnoklassniki:

1. Becoming an administrator or moderator of a large group.
2. By creating your own online store group.
3. By posting advertisements in your group or on your page.
4. By placing links to affiliate programs.

Earnings are very different, depending on the specifics of the activity - from several thousand to several tens of thousands of rubles.

Promotion and promotion in Odnoklassniki

Promoting your page or group on Odnoklassniki is necessary primarily for those who do business online and who need a large audience.

You can easily gain subscribers to a group or friends - simply by inviting them to the community or sending friend requests. If they are interested in you, they will definitely reciprocate, and in order to attract attention, you need to work on your page or group, constantly updating and posting interesting content.

Despite the constant confrontation with VKontakte, Odnoklassniki remains a unique project that is interesting to users. This is largely possible due to providing its users with a wide range of options for leisure and income.

The Facebook audience is more likely to be active people who are looking for something, achieving, fighting, proving, changing the world,

VKontakte’s audience is largely young people and teenagers who are passionate about music, parties and the search for the meaning of life,

Odnoklassniki’s audience is calm homebodies who love to look through photo albums, kill hours with sapper cards, stroking a well-fed cat :)

And there are many such people!

The most modern means of organizing the educational process, pedagogical communication, and improving professional level is the telecommunication technology Web 2.0. This is a new round of Internet development, in which the main emphasis is on socialization, bringing it closer to end users, uniting people, developing online services, simplifying the process of obtaining information and working with it.
The appearance of the term Web 2.0 is usually associated with the article “Tim O'Reilly - What Is Web 2.0” dated September 30, 2005, first published in Russian in the Computerra magazine No. 37 (609) and 38 (610) and then presented under with the title "What is Web 2.0" of the site "Computerra online". In this article, Tim O'Reilly connected the emergence of a large number of sites, united by some common principles, with the general trend in the development of the Internet community, and called this phenomenon Web 2.0, as opposed to the "old "Web 1.0. Web 2.0 turns information networks into social ones. The convergence of network communications with social (real) ones is concretized precisely in Web 2.0. The network, in fact, becomes a social operator, operating with the help of new communication models that establish control over all its subjects.
The term was coined in 1954 by Manchester School sociologist James Barnes. He developed an approach to studying relationships between people, invented back in the 30s, using sociograms, i.e. visual diagrams in which individuals are represented as points and connections between them are represented as lines. Sociometry, a psychological method for determining the distribution of roles in a team, is based on this approach. A complex of sociological and mathematical research methods has been formed, which form the scientific foundation of modern analysis of social networks.
A social network is a social structure consisting of nodes connected in one or more ways through social relationships (examples of nodes include individuals, groups of people, or communities). In the usual sense of the word, a social network is a community of people connected by common interests, a common cause, or some other reason for direct communication.
A social network is a set of social objects and a certain set of relationships on it. Social objects (actors) are also called actors. Metaphor" social fabric" or " web of relationships"was used by social philosophers of the 19th and 20th centuries. The history of scientific research on a social network can be counted from the 1930s, when J. Moreno published a series of works on sociometry. In the lectures of A. Radcliffe-Brown, the concept of social structure was developed as an orderly combination of parts into a whole, a stable pattern of relationships between people.
At first, the interest of researchers was limited to connections between individuals in small groups. In the 1950s, the work of English anthropologists J. Barnes and E. Bott drew attention to more complex social phenomena associated with membership in a social network. Thus, S. Nadyalina advocated considering not individuals, but social positions, statuses, roles, groups and institutions, as units of social structure.
Today, two approaches can be distinguished in defining social networks: 1) applied and 2) general theoretical.
The first approach is common in economic sociology and is intended to solve specific applied problems. Here, the network is an informal association, as opposed to official interactions at any level. The network is opposed to hierarchy, and the relationship of coordination is opposed to subordination.
The second approach is more theoretical and mathematical; it is aimed at creating a universal network model of society. The mathematical basis of network analysis is graph theory. In general terms, a social network is defined as a special type of connections between network nodes, which are selected depending on the purposes of building a particular network.

A network node is the main concept of network analysis of social structure, an indivisible particle of social interaction. On the Internet, a social network is a software service, a platform for interaction between people (individuals, users) in a group or groups. Theoretically, any online community whose members take part, for example, in discussions on a forum, can be considered a social network. The social network is also created by readers of the thematic community on the blog service. Many professional communities have become a tool for finding people, recommending employees and finding a job. Social networks in their modern form have a number of additional capabilities compared to previously created user communication tools.
The main feature of the social network is the new generation of services provided, namely tools for finding the right contacts and establishing connections between people. With the help of these social network tools, each of its users can create their own virtual portrait - create a profile in which they indicate in detail information about themselves, their work experience, hobbies, interests and goals. Having a profile already allows you to use mechanisms for finding like-minded people, co-religionists, colleagues, people with whom communication is necessary in work and study. That is, a network participant supposedly receives his own “place of residence” on the Internet, and it is not even close to the personal sites that spread at the dawn of the Internet.
The level of development of social networks has almost reached its peak, and at this time one can see the birth of new social networks almost every day. Recently, these have become niche social networks. Quite often you can come across interesting topics, sometimes simply absurd. This trend was caused by the saturation of the market with general networks “for everyone”. Among the most interesting are projects such as MyChurch. com - a social network for creating your own churches, Geni - Genealogy - Free Family Tree - a network of relatives, or Runetiv examples: We remember... - a social network of memory, DrugMe.ru - a social network for sick and recovering people; Odnokamerniki.su, Dodgeball, MoyMir from Mail.ru. There is a mobile version on the social network VKontakte and Odnoklassniki.
Western analogues have had mobile versions for quite some time. One of the latest is currently being tested - a mobile version of the professional social network LinkedIn.