Since its inception, social media has seen a few major redesigns and has introduced new ways of displaying current events and news. It has also focused more on the group, allowing users to connect emotionally with brands or businesses. Storytelling and images are key to differentiating yourself, whether through a branded video, photos, graphics or illustrations, to captivate your audience. One of the most popular social media sites is Facebook, which currently has 1 billion active users, making it the sixth most popular social media platform in the world.
This GIF demonstrates how explosive the growth of social networks has been in the last 12 years. It is an understatement to say that social networks have had a huge impact on the world. Research also showed that 80 percent of social media posts are advertisements about a person's experiences. However, there are plenty of other social media sites out there, especially once you start looking at how people use social media platforms around the world.
This graphic shows that there are some large social media sites that have existed for ten or more years, such as Facebook, YouTube and Reddit; but other large sites are much newer. Most of the social media platforms that survived the last decade have significantly changed in what they offer to users. The increase in the use of social media over the past decade has been accompanied by a big increase in the amount of time people spend online. This means that one in three people in the world uses social media platforms and more than two-thirds of all Internet users.
Many people like to link the history of social networks with the growth of communication technology that has occurred since the end of the 19th century.
