What is social networking?
what is social networking?
Social networking refers to using internet-based social media sites to stay connected with friends, family, colleagues, or customers. Social networking can have a social purpose, a business purpose, or both through sites like Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, and Pinterest.
Social networking is also a significant opportunity for marketers seeking to engage customers. Facebook remains the largest and most popular social network, with 2 billion people using the platform daily, as of Feb 1, 2023.
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Other popular platforms in the U.S. are Instagram, X, WhatsApp, TikTok, and Pinterest.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Social networking uses internet-based social media platforms to connect with friends, family, or peers.
Some of the most popular social networking sites in the U.S. include Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, WhatsApp, and X.
Marketers use social networking to increase brand recognition and encourage brand loyalty.
Social media can help connect people with businesses for various needs.
There are disadvantages related to social media, including spreading misinformation, concerns posed by user anonymity, and the high cost of using and maintaining social network profiles.
How Social Networking Works
Social networking involves the development and maintenance of personal and business relationships using technology. This is done through the use of social networking sites, such as Facebook, Instagram, and X.
These sites allow people and corporations to connect with one another so they can develop relationships and share information, ideas, and messages.
For Family and Friends
Family members and friends can reconnect and remain connected through personal social networking sites like Facebook. They can share photos and status updates on everyday or important life events. People can also connect with unknown individuals who share the same interests, goals, or experiences. Individuals can find each other through groups, lists, and hashtags—an indexing function that groups topics.
For Marketers
Marketers commonly use social networking to increase brand recognition and encourage brand loyalty. Social media marketing helps promote a brand’s voice and content. It can help make a company more accessible and prominent to new and existing customers.
For example, a frequent X user may learn about a company for the first time through a news feed and decide to buy a product or service. The more exposed people are to a company’s brand, the greater the company's chances of finding and retaining new customers.
Marketers use social networking to improve conversion rates. Building a following provides access to and interaction with new, recent, and longtime customers. Sharing blog posts, images, videos, or comments on social media allows followers to react and engage, visit a company’s website, and become customers.
Major Social Networking Platforms
Facebook
Facebook is a social network that allows users to connect with people, businesses, and organizations. They can post updates and respond to the posts of others. They can share photographs and links to online content. Users can chat live and upload and share videos.
Users can also communicate directly with each other via Facebook Messenger. They can join groups with similar interests and be notified of friends' activities and pages they elect to follow.
Facebook was designed to be open and social. However, while the platform encourages publicly available content, it also has privacy controls that can restrict access to, for instance, friends.
Facebook was created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg while he went to Harvard University. Today, it is owned by Meta Platforms (of which Zuckerberg is CEO). Facebook is the world's largest social network, with about 2 billion daily active users.
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Instagram
Instagram is a social network that focuses on sharing visual media like photos and videos. It's similar to Facebook in that users create a profile and have a news feed. It allows them to upload media that can be edited with filters and01:42 PM
