What Is Social Media? 10 Social Networks Worth Joining

Since the first email tool appeared in 1971, the world has gained more than 150 social media large and small. Some are popular worldwide, like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, while others work only within one country or one group, like Weibo for Chinese users, Orkut in South America, CyWorld in South Korea, Mixi in Japan, and in Vietnam Zingme, Yume, Zalo and others. Over the past 10 years or more, social networks have become more popular still. They are not only an indispensable part of life and daily habits for many people, but also an important part of today's economy.

People use social networks for more than sharing news, and they have found many different uses for them.Let's go through MONA Media the list of 10 social networks you should join, and look at some new uses of social networks you may not know about.

What is a social network?

Put simply, a social network is a website or online platform that many people use to chat and exchange news about daily life and personal interests. Social networks have also brought many couples together, and let families keep in touch by phone with children studying far from home.

Today you can easily find and open social networks on a phone or computer. Some popular features of social networks today include video calls, voice calls, chat, watching videos and photos, and more.

Common traits of joining a social network

Every social network today has its own name and runs on the internet. To join one, though, there are some common requirements:

• Users need to create a profile for verification before they get their own account;
• Social networks can still link to each other. For example, you can link Facebook to log in to TikTok or Instagram.
• Users can connect with each other by account name, email, phone number and so on. The social network connects users to the personal or organization accounts they search for.
• Users decide what to share on their own page (though some dangerous images or videos are moderated).

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How social networks affect our lives

The goal of social networks

Almost all social networks today aim at the same thing: a system where users can connect, interact and share useful knowledge on the platform.

The second goal is a community of real value that raises each user's awareness in building relationships.

From those two goals come many benefits: users can follow the daily news, build relationships between people from different regions of a country and even from different countries, and do business, among other things.

The harms of social networks

• Less face-to-face interaction between people: You can see this at family or friend gatherings, where everyone is on their phone scrolling Facebook or TikTok. Social media addiction not only takes time away from the people around you, it can also strain real-life friendships, and you may value your "virtual" friends more than what is in front of you.
• Seeking attention from others on social media: Posting sensitive content or vague status updates in groups or on your page to get likes and views only gets attention the first few times. After that it can make other users dislike you. 
• Dropping your earlier goals: Focusing too much on social media makes many people forget what they once wanted to do and had planned. Instead of building a better future, they stare at their phone screens or become "keyboard warriors" who comment everywhere.
• Depression: Staying up late on your phone wears down your health and can lead to emotional disorders and a foggy mind, even if you catch up on sleep the next morning. At some point the body reaches its limit and depression can follow.
• Online violence: Many people comment just to satisfy themselves, without thinking about how the person receiving negative comments will feel. Around the world there have been many cases where someone received too many negative comments from "keyboard warriors" and was led to negative thoughts and suicide. So think before you comment or post anything on social media, if you want to avoid serious incidents.
• Losing love: Social media is one of the things that can break up a relationship, through blind jealousy and suspicion, snooping on a partner's phone. That leads to a lack of trust, and then the relationship ends. Social media seems like it could warm up a relationship, but it can also be an unpredictable cause of trouble if you cannot control your own suspicion. 
• Losing motivation: Constantly comparing yourself with others makes you lose confidence, which leads to low morale and negative feelings. Stop comparing, because everyone has their own strengths and weaknesses.
• Lack of sleep: Phone signals and screen light affect your body and disrupt your body clock, which leads to insomnia. If this happens often, your health and mood suffer badly. Our advice is not to use your phone before bed, and to keep it away from where you sleep.
• Privacy: Hackers can attack you if your profile is infected with a virus, and your personal information can be stolen. If you post personal details such as your phone number or home address publicly, you may be harassed or put in danger by bad actors.

10 social networks you should be on

Facebook

I would like to start the list with social media the most popular in Vietnam today – Facebook. Have you ever wondered why Facebook is so popular? When Facebook appeared, people needed a place to share their feelings, like Yahoo! 360,^o and also to keep up with friends, hot news if possible, interact with others, chat through a tool like Messenger, and more. All of that was built into Facebook.

Here are reasons you should use Facebook:

• If you have used Facebook since the early days, it keeps you there because your friends and family are still there. Your connections are on Facebook, and even if you get bored of it, you still need it as a channel to reach them. You cannot get everyone to move to another social network by yourself. And even if some of them use another one because of you, Facebook is still the main channel. Sometimes you cannot reach a friend on Skype, for example, so go to Facebook, because they may be wandering around there.
• Even without the connections, there is one very good reason to use Facebook: new online sales channel. Everyone knows Facebook has a huge number of users. Together with Facebook's optimized ad algorithms that bring your products and services to the right target customers, FB is still one of the most effective sales channels today, even dominant for certain product types.
• Communication is the next draw I recommend. On Facebook you can write long, heartfelt posts, short sentences full of meaning, post images with specific content, video, and many other formats. You can build community pages that grow toward their own goals, and advertise to reach your target audience.

Youtube

Created long before Facebook, but arguably only really popular once it became part of Google, this social network now has users who open YouTube every day out of unconscious habit.

YouTube – the most popular social network

• Videos shared by everyone: carefully produced clips and spontaneous ones from users. This is one of YouTube's biggest draws.
• Share your clips with friends and the YouTube community.
• Make money online with YouTube by creating a personal channel and growing it toward a set goal. This is attracting more and more attention from YouTube users and the wider community.

If you look closely, most of the TV programs we watch every day are posted on YouTube, on a channel for that program or a sponsor's channel, right after they air. This way media companies both earn revenue and bring their programs to more viewers.

X

Twitter, a leading social platform with many users

Alongside Facebook we have X. For a while the media spent a lot of ink comparing these two arguably biggest social networks. One of the analyses asked why X is not as popular in Vietnam as Facebook even though both arrived around the same time. The main reasons given were usage habits and cultural traits. And although X has many more users in Vietnam than before, it still trails Facebook a little. X works better for you if you have many friends who are foreigners or who live and work abroad.

But when we talk about X and Facebook, it is not only about the number of users in Vietnam but also about what they are used for. While Facebook grew as a social network for business and the economy, X is now used by many politicians as a powerful weapon. A clear example is Donald Trump, whose success in the last election was helped by X. He showed real cleverness in choosing and using social media as an effective way to communicate.

LinkedIn

Social media for traders and business owners

LinkedIn cannot be missing from this list. Unlike Facebook and X, which are for everyone, LinkedIn targets business and jobs only, which is a smart direction.

LinkedIn has successfully built a place where business people and office workers can connect, build a network of ties, cooperation and support for their business. Join LinkedIn to widen your network, learn more and look for career opportunities

Pinterest

Pinterest – the largest image-based social network in the world

What impresses you about Pinterest – social media which is 8 years old? First, on Facebook we recognize the Like button, on Twitter the Tweet, and on Pinterest we think of the Pin button, which saves an image on Pinterest as your personal reference that you can view again.

It is built like LinkedIn in direction but different in idea. If LinkedIn is a social network for connecting and sharing information among a group of individuals or organizations, Pinterest also targets a small group of users but specializes in images. The images are high quality and professionally designed. Pinterest is a photo network especially for designers, and if you are a true designer, a professional photographer or work in anything related to photographic art, logo design create a Pinterest account today.

You can create a personal account or a Profile (personal or company) to show off your work on Pinterest. It is also where people go to browse each other's design ideas.

Instagram

Applying social media professional photos

Instagram is also a social network with a large user base. Instagram takes a different angle from Facebook by focusing on images and photo rights, which means you cannot download photos to your device from Instagram. People love Instagram for its photo editing highly polished photo filters. It is a smart, convenient mix of a social network and a photo editing app.

Flickr

A social network for professional photographers

Use Flickr works as a useful photo management tool if you are a professional photographer. Flickr gives users a really impressive experience by letting them publish their work under a copyright license or without one. Copyright has always been a sore point for creators, who want to show their work and still keep it theirs, safe from open theft.

Tumblr

Tumblr

Tumblr is becoming more popular in Vietnam, and you can easily find fellow Vietnamese users there. More importantly, Tumblr offers a different way to use social media: you pick the topics you care about and follow them, instead of the mass-market feed of Facebook and similar networks.

Something you notice quickly on Tumblr is the personal touch in what each member shares. Tired of Facebook, fed up with Instagram? Come to Tumblr as a quiet corner of your own.

After using Tumblr, you may realize that social media does not have to be noisy like Facebook or showy like Instagram. Sometimes all you need is a place to write without anyone having to reply.

SlideShare

SlideShare, a social network for sharing documents

Last on my list of networks you should join is Slideshare.net. Few articles will tell you to use SlideShare, but join it and you will see the benefit if you want to share documents or find professional ones.

We already have networks for sharing news, videos and photos, so why not add a channel for sharing useful documents to your list? On SlideShare you can find lectures, strong presentations, and in-depth, meaningful research.

This is a social media channel that is extremely useful for anyone who needs documents for research, not only students but experts in every field.

100+ more things you should know about social networks

This list has some names you already know, some you may not, and a few that might surprise you.

Gmail 

About Gmail

Do not be surprised to see Gmail on this list. It meets the criteria of social media, Gmail connects everyone through a fast method and a professional workflow shared by its community. Some people even say a company looks unprofessional if it does not use Gmail as its main way to communicate.

Gmail is not only a way to exchange messages. Users also manage documents and other important things online with it. Even now that website design people can create email on their own domain, Gmail is still the one many prefer.

Yahoo mail 

Yahoo mail

If this article had been written a year ago, Yahoo Messenger would have been on the list. It was an online chat app that once ruled the scene and is tied to the early 8X and 9X generations of Yahoo! users. It was officially shut down on August 5 last year. We still have a heavyweight candidate in Yahoo Mail. Yahoo Mail used to be the largest email service in the world under Yahoo! but now belongs to Verizon. After a series of notable improvements in its new home, it is expected to make a second storm after years of decline.

AOL Mail

What is AOL Mail?

AOL is in the same boat as Yahoo!, since it was also bought by Verizon in 2015. After many successes, AOL faded in the face of Google, Facebook and others. Users forgot about it, and if it were left out of this article you might not even know what AOL is.

Still, after the change of owner, Verizon brought AOL back, and it became one of the most trusted free, unlimited email services in the world.

Oath

A perfect combination of AOL Mail and Yahoo Mail

After merging Yahoo and AOL, Verizon chose a new name for both: Oath. So Oath is Verizon's newest mail app, inheriting the optimized technology of its parents, AOL Mail and Yahoo Mail. Since the merger, Verizon has made no new moves, but we will wait and see what Oath achieves, as a Verizon representative promised.

Outlook

What is Outlook?

Outlook is one of the Microsoft family. By Microsoft's own definition, Outlook is a free email and calendar service that keeps users up to date on important information. By 2016, Outlook had reached 400 million users. With its useful features and tight integration with the other software in the family, Outlook is expected to keep growing.

iCloud mail

Apple's email platform

If Outlook belongs to Microsoft, the name iCloud makes it easy to see this is an Apple product. iCloud can be seen as an online storage service that backs up and syncs photos, data, videos, contacts and more across Apple devices such as iPhone, iPad and MacBook, or computers running Windows. iCloud is also well known for locating a device when it is stolen and for wiping data remotely.

After all this, you will find that things are not like they used to be, when a single social media launched and became the leader, and the manager's job was just to bring in as many users as possible from people who did not yet know social media. Now it is one main social network plus a few secondary accounts orbiting around it.

Flipboard: a social network that summarizes the news

Flipboard: a social network that summarizes the news

If you want an interesting mobile social network in today's fast-moving world, it is Flipboard. You can catch up on news from every field around the world in about 15 minutes of browsing. If you want an experience completely different from the apps you use now, download Flipboard and launch it. You will be surprised right away. I bet you will open Flipboard at least once a day.

Telegram

A free chat app for web and mobile

Telegram is a free chat app for web and mobile, so how does it differ from other chat apps? Amid threats to user security, Telegram arrived with a completely different approach, letting users build chat apps on Telegram's own platform. The company does not charge for the service, sell content or run ads, and if it runs out of funding it will do what Wikipedia does and ask users for support. This approach may well make Telegram the world's leading chat app by user count and by trust in personal data security.

VK (Vkontakte)

One of the biggest social networks in beautiful Russia

Did you know Telegram has an older brother? It is one of the social media largest networks in the land of birch trees: Vkontakte, commonly called VK. Both were created by Pavel Durov. For various reasons, though, VK no longer belongs to him, and he was expelled from Russia over some mistakes.

Odnoklassniki

The most popular social network in Russia

Another large and popular network in Russia. According to Alexa.com, odnoklassniki.ru ranked 67th among the most visited sites in the world and 7th in Russia.

Viber

Once known for its video calling app

I think you know Viber. It is a popular chat app in Vietnam, especially for free "in-app" calls and very cheap "out-of-app" calls (using Viber Out).

Zalo

When it comes to free messaging and calling apps popular in Vietnam, I have to mention Zalo. Zalo is a purely Vietnamese app, with something of a WeChat feel (which I will not discuss here). It is not only a phone app: Zalo can now be embedded into website code as an online support tool for companies on their websites.

Zalo: the messaging app Vietnamese people like best

It is something to be proud of that Vietnam has such a convenient, simple and versatile communication app, where users can sell on Zalo (much like Facebook). Some reviews say that selling on Zalo reaches the right audience more precisely because it goes through the phone numbers of people you know. Inaddition, Zalo is in the early stage of trialing an online payment app called ZaloPay, which helps users sell more effectively with codes QR code.

Wechat

Next is WeChat, a famous mobile messaging app from China. What I describe below may surprise you.

WeChat: the most popular messaging app in China

In China, WeChat accompanies children from the age of 3, with features tied to everyday life, and people can even interact with society without closing the app. Many of the world's top tech companies, including Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat, have their eyes on this most popular app in China.

Whatsapp

WhatsApp: the newest member of the Facebook family

In 2014 Facebook bought WhatsApp for 19 billion dollars, reportedly because leaving it alone could threaten its own Messenger. So what makes WhatsApp so strong? It is a cross-platform messaging app that lets users send free messages as long as they have internet. As a pure and free chat app, you will feel completely comfortable with WhatsApp's simple interface on both mobile and desktop.

Snapchat

Snapchat: a heavyweight rival to Facebook Messenger

When talking about messaging apps, you cannot skip Snapchat, Facebook's sworn rival. Snapchat is a very fun image-based messaging app, and if you do not know what it is yet, I suggest you download it and try it for yourself.

In 2013, news reports said Facebook tried to buy the app but failed. Since then, many controversies have shown Facebook copying several of its signature features outright, for both Facebook and Instagram.

Snow

Setting aside those unflattering copies by the world's largest social network, Snapchat still faces an even blatant clone on the other side of the world: the Chinese messaging app Snow.

Snow: a Snapchat-like chat app in the Chinese market

Part of the reason is that China does not let outside apps into its territory, yet its people wanted a fun messaging app like Snapchat. That is why Snow was born, with almost every feature identical to Snapchat. Snow is not only strong in China; it is becoming more popular across Asia, and it may one day become a serious rival in Europe and the US.

Myspace

Myspace: once the biggest social network in the United States

A social network older than Facebook, once the most popular network in the US. Today Myspace has fallen far from its old position and given way to many newer networks. Still, Myspace gives users an interesting place to share information, write blogs and do much more, such as forming groups and storing photos, music and videos.

Digg

What is Digg?

Digg is an social media interesting site for people who write blogs. It helps users find posts on blogs and supports promoting those pages. Visit digg.com and if you are a professional blogger, you will enjoy what this network has built.

Reddit

What is Reddit?

Reddit is a mix of a social network and a forum. It may seem less free than posting on Facebook, but Reddit's rules make things more engaging. You can post as Text or as a Link. With Text, you write a title and a description. With a Link, you can only write a title for the link. Every post must also be placed in a Subreddit, and each Subreddit has its own rules and topic.

Like Digg, Reddit is also good if you want to promote a website and improve SEO on search engines by bringing in more visits from this news network.

Weibo

What is Weibo? Its full name is Sina Weibo, and it is China's largest social network. Four years after Facebook launched and took off in the US and many other countries without gaining any foothold in China, Weibo appeared as a mix of Twitter and Facebook. Weibo has almost no rival at home and is the largest network for Chinese people both in China and abroad.

What is Weibo?

As with Facebook elsewhere, celebrities in China use Weibo as their main media channel . The accounts with the most followers there have more than the world's biggest singers such as Justin Bieber and Katy Perry. If you want to become famous quickly around the world, you could learn Chinese and build a channel on this network.

Zing Me

If China has Weibo, Vietnam has Zing Me.

What is Zing Me? About 5 years ago, the tech site Genk called Zing Me the most powerful social network in Vietnam. After Facebook grew stronger and nearly beat Zing Me on its home turf, its parent company VNG announced that Zing Me would become a social network for Vietnam's digital content industry. I think this is a workable direction, since VNG is a large tech company in our country.

Yume, Tam Tay

Besides Zing Me, Vietnam had a few other social networks that made noise around 2008 and 2009, including Yume.vn and tamtay.vn. But without the creativity and technology of the big foreign players, these networks faded from users' minds. Today these sites have either become news sites or been sold to other large companies and changed purpose completely.

Viadeo

Viadeo: a LinkedIn-like network in France

Viadeo (not Video) is a social network similar to LinkedIn, founded in 2004 for businesspeople, business owners and managers. In 2016, Viadeo had 40 million users worldwide.

Despite many efforts to reach the world market, it is still mostly loved within France.

Xing

Xing: the largest professional network

Together with Viadeo and LinkedIn, Xing is one of the three largest professional networks. Everyone knows LinkedIn, but few know what Xing is. Xing is a product of a German company, and unlike LinkedIn and Viadeo, its users come from all kinds of fields and industries. They come to Xing to make friends, exchange ideas, find jobs, look for partners and share career experience. Xing has almost no limit on which industries it serves, unlike the limit LinkedIn faces.

So we have just gone through some interesting facts about social networks in Vietnam and abroad. Clearly, in today's world of fast-moving technology, anyone who cannot change and grow will be pushed out. Many networks that once ruled are now forgotten, and people know only Facebook, Twitter, Weibo and a few others. In Vietnam, luckily, Zalo is still growing.