Top 5 Social Networks

Social networking sites are in a huge demand today. In fact, if there would be a competition for "Internet Buzzword of the Decade", the winner would certainly have been social networking. These sites are used almost religiously by millions of users worldwide. These sites have the potential to fill the gap created by time and space between individuals. People are making full use of these sites for personal and professional use. Be it connecting old friends, finding new acquaintances or business contacts, dating or meeting offline, each activity is facilitated by this new breed of websites.

Social networking sites have been going through constant changes in recent times. All social networks are coming with innovative ways to attract new users and retain their user base. With so many social networking sites are jumping to the fray daily, it is interesting to know which one is winning the race.

Following is the list of top social networking sites globally based on their popularity among users:

#1 Facebook

Facebook was launched in February 2004 by Harvard undergraduate students as an alternative to the traditional student directory. Its popularity quickly spread to other colleges as well in the United States resulting in millions of users and billions of page views per month today. In a short span of time it became the most visited social networking site in US and still growing. It is also one of the most visited sites on the Web and ranks in top five in overall ranking. Facebook is already generating significant revenue and besides all the valuation and web traffic metric, it has also established a very real business today.

#2 MySpace

MySpace is arguably one of the most fascinating web success stories we have heard in the past few years. From personal home pages to social networking; the journey has been amazing so far. MySpace was founded by Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe in 2003 and was later sold to News Corporation for $580 million in 2005. Since then, it has become one of the top five most visited sites in the US and still continues to draw millions of new visitors each month. In the most volatile world of Web where each new venture is prone to failure at any point of time, the continuing success of MySpace is really commendable.

#3 Twitter

All social networking sites have common features such as creating and searching profile, uploading pictures and videos, keeping a blog, event listing and integrating useful and eccentric stuff on the home page. Yet one social network that is similar to others yet strikingly different is Twitter. With its simplicity, Twitter is rapidly becoming one of the most talked about and used social networking sites. Officially launched in March 2006, the growth rate that the company has witnessed in recent times is phenomenal. It had 1,382% growth rate in February 2009 only. Sending messages on twitter or as they call it 'tweeting' has become one of the most sought after things on the web today.

#4 Hi5

Founded in 2003, the site is most popular in Mexico and Thailand. Though the site has continuously been losing popularity, it is still number three in the popularity list. Hi5 lets its users expressing with custom profiles, avatars music and more.

#5 Orkut

Orkut is not so popular in USA and Europe. And if despite the lack of popularity among the users in USA and Europe, it is still able to make to the five of social networking sites, the credit goes to its strong fan following in Brazil and India. Orkut was quietly launched in January 2004 by Google. Orkut Buyukkokten, a Turkish software engineer, developed it as an independent project .