Welcome back guys! We're almost at that number one spot!!

Twitter, one of the biggest communication networks of the last 100 years, is ranked as the 2nd most popular social network among teens. Back in 2006, Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter, originally planned for Twitter to be a site similar to text messaging, but on a website so that users could communicate online. It later developed into a popular social network site where members could send and read "tweets" about anything and everything. But, where did the name 'Twitter' come from? "...we came across the word 'twitter', and it was just perfect. The definition was a short burst of inconsequential information, and chirps from birds. And that's exactly what the product was", explained Dorsey. It had all began on March 21, 2006 at exactly 9:50 pm when the very first message on Twitter was sent by Dorsey, the founder himself. It read, "just setting up my twitter."

Logo

If you ask somebody what the bird logo represents, they will most likely answer Twitter. But, did you know that Twitters logo was redesigned a couple different times before it looked like it does now? From March 2006 until September 2010, Twitter's logo was a simple colorless bird signature. On February 27, 2012, the site underwent a redesign, and the new logo was redesigned and influenced from Larry Bird of the NBA's Boston Celtics. Finally, on June 5, 2012, Twitter had announced an official logo for the website and it resembled a mountain bluebird. The mountain bluebird logo remains still to day. 

140 character limit

I'm sure all of us Twitter users have wondered why you can only tweet 140 characters, well atleast I have! Since Twitter was originally planned out to be a text messaging site, they wanted to restrain users to only a 140 character limit; it was the same limit that mobile phone company's used as well. The website developed and Dorsey wanted to keep the limit making it different from other social networks. While Dorsey thought it was creative, I, myself do not like it. I find it hard to express your feelings, or even try to have a conversation user to user on the site with only 140 character limit. 

A study by Pear Analytics supervised 2000 tweets over a two week period in the summer of 2009 and came to a conclusion of the contents in the tweets; 

Pointless babble - 40%

Conversational - 38%

Pass-along value - 9%

Self promotion - 6% 

Spam - 4%

News - 4% 

However, these statistics don't surprise me at all because when I'm scrolling down my Twitter timeline all I read is tweets from people complaining, gossiping, or stressing over the most pointless things! I hope people realize that complaining about things on Twitter won't change or help your problems! 

By 2012, the online social networking site was known worldwide and gained over 500 million users. Today, Twitter has over 500 million users, with over 100 thousand users signing up everyday. Twitter averages a total of 58 million tweets per day; with over 9 thousand tweets per second! It has became one of the most popular micro-blogging services in the world. I can't say that I tweet a lot in a day, but I do go on Twitter frequently. It's a great way to communicate, share thoughts, express how you're feeling (to an extent), and even make new friends! 99% of my friends have a Twitter account, and I know they love it! Not to mention, on this very own blog, 53% of bloggers reading my posts said they'd prefer Twitter over the other social networks listed! 

Tune in next week to find out the most popular social networking site!!! Leave a comment below on which social network you think is the most popular! 

http://mashable.com/2013/08/16/teens-social-media-chart/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter

http://twitter.about.com/od/Twitter-Basics/a/The-Real-History-Of-Twitter-In-Brief.htm

Instagram, one of my most favorite social networking sites is ranked as the 3 most popular social networks among teens! First of all, what is Instagram? Instagram is a website where you can share pictures, videos, comment back and fourth and even follow and like other users posts. In October 2010, only 3 years ago, this online site was created and developed by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger from San Francisco. The site became very popular and by December 2010, the Instagram community had over 100 million users. On January 2011, Krieger and Systrom gave the opportunity to the users for their photos and videos to be recognized and added hashtags. Users could now "hashtag" words and sentences so that when other users searched up a specific interest, there was a chance for their posts to be recognized. With such popularity and growth, on February 2, 2011, Instagram had raised over $7 million from several different investors, such as Adam D'Angelo, and Benchmark Capital.

 In August 2011, Instagram reached an impressive number of photo downloads on the site; 150 million photos were uploaded. To add to that, the Instagram community grew to over 10 million users later in 2011. Later that year, Instagram launched several Apps for different phones (Iphone, Android) and was surprisingly downloaded more than one millionn times that same day it was released. It was the 5th app to reach one million ratings on Google Play! In December, Instagram was rated Iphones App of the Year!

However, on April 12, 2012, Facebook made a deal with the founders of Instagram and later bought Instagram for a total price of $300 million in cash and 23 million shares of stock. But, is the site really worth $300 million dollars? This new purchase did not affect the Instragram users though; by July 2012, the site reached 80 million users and it just kept growing and changing to bigger and better things. The next month, Instagram updated their site and launched Photo Maps so that users were able to geographically located on a map on the site where the photo or video was taken. On November 5th, 2012, Instagram created Profiles on the web so that users were able to locate their profile not only on their smart phone app, but also on their desktop computer! This big change got a lot of good feedback and Instagrammers loved this new update. I love it because it's not only another way to access Instagram, but it enlarges the pictures or posts I'm searching. Sometimes you can't always read the little writing on the pictures from a small screen on a cell phone!

Instagram was being used worldwide, meaning that not everyone using Instagram spoke English. So, on December 2012, they made an update making Instagram compatible in 25 different languages to give users all around the world who were interested the opportunity to use this site! However, a huge controversy had struck. In 2013, after many investigations and follow ups, Instagram found out that many users, mainly from the United States were posting photos of illegal drugs in hopes of selling them to different users from the site. After this incident, they banned any hashtags involving illicit drugs or anything in that manner to forbid this from happening again!

 Instagram today has become so popular and has gained over 150 million people. I have the Instagram App on my iPhone and I go on it ATLEAST 5 times a day. I'm constantly scrolling through my news feed looking at my friends posts, or even searching for pictures looking at animals or even historic places. You can search up anything from quotes, recipes, pictures of animals, tutorials, and even pictures of countries! It's such a great site to keep in touch with friends and family and share photos from where you are or what you're doing! Do you guys feel the same way? Are you guys hooked on Instagram like myself?

We're almost at the most popular social network!! Tune in next week to find out the 2nd most popular site! 

http://mashable.com/2013/08/16/teens-social-media-chart/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instagram
http://instagram.com/press/

MySpace, known as "A Place for Friends" is ranked as the 4th most popular social networking site! It's not just your typical social networking site, MySpace has chat rooms, movie theaters, shopping malls, bars, and concerts on the site that are open all day, all night, and all year round. MySpace was first created in 2003 by a small group of programmers, named Brad Greenspan, Chris DeWolfe, Josh Berman, Toan Nguyen, and Tom Anderson, who had another Internet company. With the influence of Friendster, a popular social network back in the day, the programmers got together and designed their own site hoping to be as successful as Friendster.

MySpace originally started in Southern California and was aimed to actors, musicians, and artists. On August 2003, the site was launched to the public. The first people to create profiles were local bands and club owners. Their profiles on MySpace helped advertise and post events to attract more publicity. At first DeWolfe thought it would be a good idea to charge users to use the site, but the rest of the programmers knew it had to stay free if they wanted to be successful and attain users. MySpace was very appealing because members had full control of their page, meaning they could design it however they preferred and post whatever they wanted to post, to an extent of course. Hence the name "MySpace", the site gives you "your space".

However, MySpace did come across some problems. MySpace became popular around the world, which lead to people questioning their safety. Users started to feel that their social security numbers were at risk, and that other people could figure them our using their personal information on their profiles. Not to mention, members of MySpace were very concerned of predators and pedophiles getting their information, such as date of birth or even hometown. Not to long after, DeWolfe made changes to the site making it much for secure. He prevented young teens from becoming members, and made sure that ever picture uploaded (17 million per day) onto each members profile was monitored. Users were satisfied with the improvements!

MySpace is still currently located in California, and becomes more successful every day. On an average day, the site has over 230,000 new members, with a total of 200 million members from around the world! Personally, I have never had a MySpace account, neither have any of my friends. It doesn't interest me because I feel like there is too much going on when you log onto the site. I'll stick to my Twitter and Instagram!! How do you guys feel about MySpace? Have you ever had a MySpace account or is it just me?

Tune in next week for the 3rd most popular social network! It starts with the letter I!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myspace
http://mashable.com/2013/08/16/teens-social-media-chart/
http://personalweb.about.com/od/myspacecom/a/whatismyspace_5.htm

 It`s hard to believe that only 8 years ago, the 5th most popular social networking site among teens called YouTube was invented. YouTube first began on February 14th, 2005 when 3 former PayPal employees, Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim, started the website name on the Internet called "YouTube.com". The website was designed to allow visitor to upload, share, view and like videos 24/7 for free!!. However, what most of us don't know is that YouTube began life as a video dating site called "Tune In Hook Up".

Three months after YouTube was activated, the founders wanted to give a sneak peak of the website to capt the interest of the public, which led a venture firm named Sequoia Capital to invest around $3.5 million in the website. A couple months later, Sequoia and Capital Management invested an additional $8 million into YouTube, which gave YouTube a huge popular growth and became much more successful.

Fun Facts

"YouTube is huge. More video content is uploaded to YouTube in a 60 day period than the three major U.S. television networks in 60 years." (http://womenadvisorforum.ning.com/profiles/blogs/3-must-know-youtube-strategies-for-financial-professionals) In July 2006, YouTube had more than 65,000 new videos uploaded per day and over 100 million video views per day. This popular site has almost 20 million visitors per month; 44% female, 56% male, and the age category 12-17 years old is the most popular to watch videos on YouTube. Looking at these statistics, YouTube outranks MySpace by far. The average YouTube user spends between 15 and 25 minutes a day on the site, which always ends up turning into over an hour, for me anyways! As of February 2011, YouTube had over 490 million unique users from around the world per month, which added up to an estimated 92 billion page views each month!!  Looking back at YouTube, the first video to be ever uploaded on YouTube was called "Me at the Zoo", a video Jawed Karim at the San Diege Zoo. This video has racked up over 12 million views since its online debut on April 23, 2005.

Today, there are over 46 thousand YouTube videos being viewed all around the world every second. On March 21, 2013, the number of unique users visiting YouTube every month reached 1 billion. To add on to that, there are more than 400 tweets per minute containing a YouTube link. It's crazy to believe that such a popular website all started with a twenty second video about a guy at the zoo. Also, YouTube videos are a great way to educate yourself on something, and find out information you didn't know. Its a much more fun way to learn, rather than to read long boring paragraphs on Google. You can search any types of videos on YouTube; tutorials, movies, shows, comedy, even stupid pointless videos, but that's why I really like YouTube!

Tune in next week to find out the 3rd most popular social networking among teens! Ill give you a hint, it starts with the letter M....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/yt/press/statistics.html
http://mashable.com/2013/08/16/teens-social-media-chart/