Social networks or social networks are not a new concept. When we talk about digital social networks and the role and influence that humans have in our lives, some people take a wise gesture and say very indifferently: everything has good and bad. If it is used well, it is good and if it is used badly, it is bad. Just like an ax!
Usually, people who take such apathetic and unfeeling stances also take the same conservative stance on many other aspects of life.
If you’re not in this group, you’re probably inclined to some extent when it comes to Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and Snap chat and the like. Either you are among those who consider social networks fleeting and a tool for wasting time, useless and annoying, and you always long for a non-smart phone without today’s operating systems, or social networks have taken over a part of your daily life.
What has made social networks in the center of attention more than ever before is the development of information technology and digital infrastructure. If in the past social networks were only formed at the scale of neighborhoods and cities, today with the cheap access to digital tools such as the Internet, mobile phones and software, a large part of people on the planet can expand their communication network regardless of time and place.
History of social media
Social networks have existed even before the industrial age in the era of agriculture and hunting. Each of the human beings have formed networks of friendship and relationship and cooperate and exchange information in the form of these networks.
It can be said that what we know as culture today is the product of the social network; Because if it wasn’t for the interaction and exchange of information and the influence of people on each other through friendship and familiarity, similar behavioral patterns would not have formed in a tribe or tribe.
Studies conducted in recent years on primitive tribes and life dependent on hunting in nature confirm the existence of a social network in the same modern sense as we know it.
Social networks have been the focus of researchers for various reasons and motivations in recent centuries.
If you refer to historical texts, you will see that infectious diseases such as plague and cholera were among the first cases that drew the attention of scientists to social networks. The type, depth and extent of communication between people determined the speed and severity of the outbreak in different societies.
But nowadays, when we hear the term Social Network, we remember social platforms like Facebook and Instagram and messaging software like WhatsApp and Telegram.
But it is important to remember that both networking and social interaction existed before the emergence and development of digital technology.
The term social network was used for the first time in 1854; That is, more than a century and a half ago. Naturally, at that time, social network did not mean tools like Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, but it was used to describe a network of people who have friendship and relationship with each other.
If we want to go one step further and get closer to today’s concept of social network, we should mention John Barnes. This Australian sociologist, who used this term in 1954 in one of his articles. He saw the social network as a kind of network; In the same sense as we understand. That is, he saw people as the nodes of a graph, where there are many lines of communication between them, and each person is a friend and has a relationship with one or more other people.
Definition of social network
Social networks are created when a structure of related nodes is formed. Social networks do not only exist between humans and can also exist between human groups such as companies and organizations.
A social network is a collection of relationship patterns between two or more members, which are formed with the purpose of exchanging information and solving problems and are relatively durable.
The term social networks is a general and very broad concept that refers to all types of human social networks and human social groups, and it cannot be summarized in a few tools such as Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube.
Social networks have some basic and key features; For example, people can have public or semi-public profiles in these networks. They can set a list of users for their profile; A list of who they want to interact with. These relationships have their own name in each network. For example, some networks use the title Friend and others use titles such as Contact and Fan. And, of course, they can view their own and others’ communication lists, subject to the limits that each person defines.
According to the explanations given, it can be said that social networks are a space where you can potentially become friends with your friend’s friend.
The first social media
The history of social networks is full of efforts and successes and failures. Many social networks did not live long enough for their names to reach everyone’s ears. For this reason, we can never say with certainty what the name of the oldest network was.
It can be said that talking about the first social network is more of an agreement than a reality. But apparently, most experts agree that Six Degrees (sixdegrees.com) can be considered the first social network with today’s format. This network was established in 1997.
Social media analysis
One of the specialized fields that has enjoyed a lot of prosperity in recent years is social network analysis or SNA .
Of course, social network analysis is not a knowledge that was born in the last one or two decades. Rather, its roots go back to sociology and the first half of the 20th century.
Sociologists were interested in using mathematical achievements in graph theory and network analysis to better understand and analyze the existing relationships in human societies, and in this way, they gained valuable achievements.
But collecting data was not easy for them. Going to people and using questionnaire tools to discover and analyze their individual characteristics and communication networks, apart from the fact that it is a costly and tiring task, it will not be accurate enough.
Even the use of government databases alone cannot be accurate enough and draw us a picture close to the reality of the society.
Given this limitation, you can probably guess how the proliferation of digital social networks became a valuable platform for social network analysis.
With this volume of data that humans disclose about themselves, analysts no longer have to beg and collect the data they need. Of course, the importance of traditional methods has not decreased. But this new platform has multiplied the power and effectiveness of traditional tools with its complementary data.
Expertise in social network analysis is one of the most expensive and profitable human expertise today and is used by governments and businesses in commercial, political, economic and security fields.
Companies like Google use social network analysis to rank sites in SEO . Of course, in this form of analysis, the network nodes are no longer human. Rather, website pages are considered as nodes, and the link between pages plays the role of communication between people.
In recent years, governments and non-profit organizations have shown interest in sentiment analysis in social networks and use this method to measure the psychological state of society.
The most popular social media in the world
Many companies and organizations around the world collect, extract and present various statistics in this field. But one of the most comprehensive and reliable sources in this field is the Statista site , which combines statistics from several reliable sources and provides fairly comprehensive statistics on the number of social network users. But it is not easy to judge which social networks are popular in the world. Because there are different criteria, listing based on each of them leads to a different result.
The number of installed applications, the ranking of websites based on traffic, the number of defined profiles, the number of daily visits are among these criteria.
Meanwhile, one of the common criteria for ranking social networks is the number of monthly active users; It means the number of people who use a network at least once a month.
You can find the statistics of monthly active users in various sources. In the graph below, I have compared the number of users of some social networks. The horizontal axis shows the number of users in millions:
As you can see, Facebook, as the most popular media in the world, has nearly three billion users. Of course, Instagram also belongs to the same group called Meta, and there are one and a half billion people working there, and a significant part of them are in common with Facebook users.
When we compare social networks based on the number of their users , we must pay attention to whether we are talking about registered users or active users .
Registered users are those who have defined a profile in a social network. Even if these people never visit the site after registration, they are still counted in the Registered Users statistics.
But active users are those who regularly use a social service. There is no uniform definition of an active user. But if an explanation was not provided in a report, you can assume that active users are those who visited it at least once in the last month.
Of course, many social networks have their own indicators to measure engagement and do not simply rely on the definition of active users in its simple form. But those looking at networks from the outside are usually not that interested in the details.
This important point should not be forgotten that the concept of user is different from audience .
From the point of view of the manager of a social network, the number of users and more precisely the number of active users is important. But from the point of view of someone who thinks about content strategy and content production and marketing for that network, it is important how many of the network’s audience and more precisely the target audience are present in that network.
For example, when the number of Telegram users in Iran is more than WhatsApp , it is natural that the number of WhatsApp users is not so important to us.
Or if a specialized social network in your field of work has only two thousand members, it cannot necessarily be said that this network is smaller than another social network with one hundred thousand members. Unless you make sure that the number of people who are members of the busier network and related to your field of work is more than two thousand people.
Use of social network
Due to the increasing prevalence of digital social networks, social media marketing has become one of the important subcategories of digital marketing .
The general principles of social media marketing are the same rules that are included in content strategy and content marketing . However, the examples and implementation method varies from one platform to another.
If you plan to work professionally in social networks and experience long-term effectiveness, you must take the time to learn digital marketing . Even if you don’t have enough time, you should at least familiarize yourself with the capabilities of digital platforms and some common mistakes in digital marketing .
The best social network
Such a question cannot be answered definitively. You should see which social networks your audience and customers are on and make a decision based on that .
Someone who is concerned about getting a job or wants to expand their professional connections may find LinkedIn useful. Another person who is active in retail might prefer Instagram. Digital marketing activists , especially those who are freelancers, have an active presence on Twitter, and in short, every activity and business finds its right social media. Even local and regional opportunities and constraints influence the choice. For example, the blocking and restriction of many social networks in Iran has caused many users to go to the few active networks. Therefore, even though Instagram may not be considered suitable for a specific industry or market in another country , this social media is a good option for your business in Iran.
The difference between social network and virtual space
The term “virtual” to describe what happens in the digital space is a very old description that has faded in the world’s scientific literature for years. Nowadays, if the term Virtual Space, which is the English equivalent of virtual space, is used in an English text or speech, a large part of the English-speaking audience basically does not understand what you are talking about. Of course, some other terms such as Virtual Reality are completely established and are still used.
On the other hand, assuming that the online world is virtual is considered a serious mistake; And that is in a situation where people form a part of their relationships in this space and positions in this space affect the physical world and even the seeds of some revolutions in the world have been closed in this space.
Therefore, using the online or digital suffix is more appropriate and scientific, and it seems that the virtual description for the online and digital space is more of an Iranian government term that is popularized and repeated by the official media. Interestingly, statesmen and official media usually use virtual space as the equivalent of digital social networks and often do not consider websites as part of this space. Therefore, apart from being wrong, such an interpretation does not have enough coverage.
The difference between social network and social media
Social networks are equivalent to the term Social Networks and social media is equivalent to Social Media . Both interpretations are correct and meaningful and are used interchangeably in general literature. For example, when it comes to being on social media, you know that it means being on platforms like Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube.
But if you want to be more precise, it is better to use the term social networks in cases where you pay attention to the relationship building aspect of these tools. On the contrary, use the term social media when you want to present content and news and influence your target audience.
For example, those who go to tools like Instagram and Twitter for personal branding , it is natural to talk about being on social media . But the person who uses these tools more than anything to communicate with his friends and acquaintances pays attention to the function of social networks.
At the same time, I must emphasize that these two concepts are getting more and more intermingled every day and the border between them is becoming more and more blurred.
In the end, in my personal opinion, communication experts are the main factor in shaping the new civil society and the decay of the traditional civil society, and by changing the concept of space and time in the network society, they have transformed the foundations of power in the new communication and network world. We are happy to share your comments with us.
