The most popular social networks: rating

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube top the social networking rankings in the world, but users from Russia (and other post-Soviet countries such as Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine) often prefer regional replacements for these platforms.

And this difference in popularity can be of great importance to companies that use such sites for advertising, as this can completely change the marketing strategy (which is used in other parts of the world). In addition, social networks, whose rating in Russian-speaking countries differs from the global one, can give huge opportunities for international communication. Currently, the most popular are eight social networks.

"In contact with"

VK (formerly known as VKontakte) is nowadays the most widespread social network in Russia, with more than 46.6 million visitors a month. Undoubtedly, this resource is headed by the rating of social networks in the post-Soviet space.

There are a lot of interesting opinions about this site, but best of all it can be described as a combination between Facebook and the service for data exchange. Like Facebook, each user has a profile, and he has the ability to search and add to the friends of other users to see updates to their status, new photos and videos.

Along with these traditional functions, users can also download audio and video files of any kind and share these resources with other people. Previously, this was rigorously tested, since, from time to time, it crossed legal boundaries, but recent reports show that VK now works with major record labels. This allowed the subscription service to start, which allows you to legally exchange media files. That's why VKontakte is leading the rating of social networks in Russia for several years.

"Classmates"

While "VKontakte" can be the most popular service among young users (aged 18-35 years), more age groups usually prefer among social networks OK (initially "Classmates"). This service has more than 31.5 million visitors per month, with a greater percentage (69%) being women. By the way, this platform was Russia's first and, it can be said, gave rise to such a phenomenon as social networks. Rating sites of this category will always remain incomplete without mentioning it.

Like VK, OK allows users to create profiles, search for friends and share status updates and images. The main purpose of creating the platform is talking with classmates and friends, with whom users could lose touch many years ago, so the search parameters are detailed enough.

In addition, the site has a function that provides information about who visited your page (regardless of whether you are their friend). To view the profiles of other users, there is an anonymity function, for which you must pay (to enable "Invisibility Mode").

"My world"

Perhaps the best universally recognized analog of the Russian "My World" is Google+. Both of these services are an extension of the Internet provider of e-mail (in the case of "My World" - mail.ru). "My World" struggled to find its own unique niche on a broader scale, but the popularity of the network is not so great. At the same time, more than 16.6 million people use this service monthly to exchange images, music and video, as well as for games and meetings with new friends, so it is included in the rating of social networks. The search strategy on the My World network contains several parameters that are not available on other platforms.

Facebook

Social networks, whose rating is great all over the world, did not bypass the post-Soviet space. Despite the fact that Facebook is not the most widespread site in Russia, its popularity has definitely started to grow - now it receives more than 21.6 million Russian-speaking visitors a month every month. This is not surprising, as Facebook is constantly changing its platform to better meet the needs of users.

Analysts believe that one of the reasons that Facebook is becoming more popular in Russia is business communication. According to some sources, more than 30% of business discussions in Russia occur on Facebook. Therefore, it will not be surprising if this platform eventually leads the rating of the most popular social networks.

"Livejournal"

Livejournal is a blogging platform that exists around 1999, but since that time it has not been used in most countries of the world. This trend is far from the truth in Russia, where more than 15.1 million users visit the "Live Journal" every month. This figure - more than half of the total traffic of the site.

Personal blogs are a great way to develop a discussion and share your opinions and perspectives on the Internet, in a way that allows more reflection and discussion. This gives much more than short messages, the possibility of posting which provide other users with social networks.

The platform rating for blogs is still high, and LiveJournal integration is still supported by a number of online services that allow it to maintain its important role in Russia and beyond.

Twitter

Twitter is another classic social media site that works well in Russia. Although it does not receive as many unique monthly visitors as other services on this list (about 7.7 million visitors per month), it boasts the largest number of subscribers from each user. Thus, in spite of the fact that Twitter can not be a support for the majority of Russian users of social networks, those who decided to use it do it on a large scale.

Rutube and YouTube

Rutube is, in fact, Russia's response to YouTube - a platform for social networking, focused on sharing video for all types of content. Despite the fact that this service did not reach the same coverage as YouTube, it gathered a lot of content from a variety of users.

Rutube places both licensed content and downloads of users. The vast majority of downloads occur in Russian. This high percentage of Russian content makes the platform an incredibly valuable resource for those who are trying to learn the language.

Instagram

The first social media platform on this list - Instagram - has become extremely popular in the past few years, and its popularity in Russia is no exception. "Instagram" is rapidly moving in the rating, and today it has 12.3 million users per month (of which 77% are young women).

This shift in popularity is largely due to the cross-placement between Instagram and other platforms, where users can use great tools for editing photos. This allows you to improve and capture the photo, and then publish it both in Instagram, and on other popular social networking sites.

While the main functions of "Instagram" continue to be easy to access and use, there are several options for tools and third-party applications that most of the users do not even know about. It is assumed that this platform will soon lead the popularity rating of social networks in most countries.

Concluding this review, it is worth noting that the success of such unique social networks as VK and OK in Russia and neighboring countries can surprise those who are used to Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, which have a complete monopoly in the world.

There is definitely a whole host of advantages for sites targeted at a specific user base, whether geographically (as in these examples) or based on demographic data (age of users).