Most famous social networking websites

Social networks must be given credit for revolutionizing our methods of communication and expression; keeping in touch with friends and family had never been this easy similarly they also provided people with a forum where they could freely express their thoughts and discuss their views with people of common interests.

There are many social network websites out there but all of them are not worth joining, through extensive research we have short listed a few social networking websites that are used and liked by majority of the people throughout the world.

These favorite social network sites have some common features and some distinct ones that allow these social networks to differ from one another.

Following below is the list of top ten social networking websites for 2011; these websites are most commonly visited and also liked by users.

* Facebook
* Twitter
* LinkedIn
* MySpace
* Digg
* Orkut
* Hi5
* Badoo
* Ning
* Friendster

FaceBook

This website, as stated by recent statistics, is the most popular social network with 500 million active members. This website was created by Mark Zuckerberg and his college roommates in 2004.

People log onto FaceBook on a daily basis and engage in many activities other than just keeping in touch and discussing things; there are many online games on FaceBook that have gained immense popularity and are played by millions of people around the world, examples being Farmville, Cityville etc.

Twitter

Twitter is the second most famous social network in the world, before FaceBook was invented it wouldn’t be wrong to say Twitter was the most favorite and used social network. It is owned and managed by Twitter Inc. and the 2011 survey stated that Twitter was valued at 4 billion dollars.

Twitter offer two services at the same time, social networking and microbolgging. Microblogging allows you to view, send and receive messages known as tweets to and from other user of the website, a tweet is like a 140 characters text message that is displayed on the Twitter user page.

LinkedIn

This website was founded in 2002 and launched in 2003; this is a specific need based social network for the business community and ranks third in the favorite social networks list.

This social network has up to 80 million users and is very commonly used among business oriented individuals; becoming a part of this social network provides access to more enhanced business opportunities.

Myspace

Currently Myspace is ranked fourth in the favorite social network list, till 2006 it was the most famous social network especially in United States of America but in 2008 FaceBook conquered its position. Nevertheless this social network still has many loyal users that visit this website regularly and engage in many activities.

Digg

Taking the fifth position in our list, this social network is very unique and interesting. Basically this is a social news website and users have the option of ranking the news to the top or bottom on the basis of their votes and this process is called digging and burying.  Many other social networks inspired by Digg have similar voting options on their website.

Orkut

Very famous search engine ‘Google’ is the owner and operator of orkut which is named after Google employee Orkut Büyükkökten; it takes the sixth position in our list.

The key feature of this social network is to allow you to make new friends and easily maintain old relations; orkut allows all the users have access to each other’s profile unlike many other social networks which provide access to the profile only if people are friends.

Hi5

A social network developed by Ramu Yalamanchi in 2003, this website has not been able to become as popular and successful in United States as its competitors (FaceBook, twitter, myspace etc) but it has a loyal and regular user base internationally, almost 46.1 million users and takes seventh position in the list.

Badoo

This social network is owned by a company in Cyprus but is operated from London, like any other social network this too provide you with a chance to create you profile page, interact with people, rate the profile pictures of other users but they have the added feature of enhancing your profiles visibility to other users but there is a user fee for this. It holds the eighth position in the list of top ten social networks.

Ning

Taking the ninth position Ning isn’t much different from any other regular social network but its exclusive feature is that anyone can build their own social network on a precise subject or need.

Freindster

This social network taking the tenth position is very famous for online dating or match fixing, many people use this network to hook up on people after viewing each other’s profile.

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