Most Facebook users are pretty loyal and enjoy the familiarity and easy usability of the Facebook format. However, as is the way of the internet, different companies have been trying to create newer, better and more popular social networking sites to try to convert Facebook users and get a share of the huge ad revenue Facebook is now making.
While most of these startups fail pretty quickly, there are a few that are actually quite succesful and growing really popular in certain social groups or parts of the world. Here are three of the Facebook competitors that aren’t about to let Zuckerberg get too comfortable up there on top.
Twitter is one of the most popular social networking sites online with over 300 million users. It is known for its short micro-blogs or “tweets” which are limited to 140 characters each. Although this site is not as friend friendly as Facebook, one of the reasons that this site has grown popular is because of its celebrity following. Twitter is a way for fans to keep up with their favorite famous personalities and find out what they’re doing and maybe even see if they have any words of wisdom to share. The great thing about this is that Twitter encourages a lot more interaction from the celebrities. That’s right, if you tweet about Britney Spears, there’s a good chance you’ll get a reply and you really can’t beat that!
LinkedIn is a more business centric networking site. You can build your professional network here and stay in touch and up to date with others in your profession. You can manage your “brand” or your professional identity and market yourself and your skills in a way that may open up more opportunities to further your career goals. LinkedIn is the largest online social network that mainly focuses on business with more than 135 million people registered with the site.
Orkut
Orkut is a Facebook-like social networking site run by Google. It has over 66 million users but many people in the United States don’t really know about it. However, it is still one of the most popular social networking sites in other countries, especially in Brazil and India. These
These are three of the sites that offer the most competition to Facebook. As you can see, they are all quite different and offer different ways to connect and interact. While these sites are popular it’s not very likely that any of them will be filling Facebook’s place at the top any time soon, but that shouldn’t stop you from using them to your advantage if you can even if you don’t plan on quitting FB just yet.
Terrence writes for a variety of sites and holds down the fort over at the Edrugstore.md blog.