Types Of Social Sites

Every day I engage with the internet I learn something new and valuable to my work, beliefs and social presence. I have been Social – meaning engaging with social media – for 9 years. 8 years were just for fun, making friends and penpals, sharing photos and listening to music, writing small blogs under alias and 1 year as a job.

With in those year I have learnt that they are different social sites. You should know, social media is old than what everyone thinks. Facebook and Twitter did not bring social media, social was here before them, all they did was hype it and provided better platforms. In this case am talking about these good old social media sites => Tagged, Hi5, SurfCoach, MySpace, BlackPlanet, Friendster, Chat rooms and the rest. I will not dig deep in to them, this is not their day… but you can check them out on Wikipedia .

Today I write about the different types of social sites, as I have come to learn. I have engaged with at least 15 social sites and most of them have similar elements which tend to change over time. Here is how I categorise them;

Personal Sites:

These allow users to create detailed online profiles to help them connect with users. These tend to emphasize social relationships like friendships. For example Facebook, Friendster, MySpace, these sites let you have your contact information so that others can reach you off the site. You can also provide your gender and age, education background, where you work , your interests etc.

Status Update Site:

This where my favorite site falls. Here users post short status updates or mini blogs in order to communicate. These are instant, at moment messages that are passed onto others. Such sites are designed to broadcast information quickly and publicly, though there may be privacy settings to restrict access to status updates. Like Twitter and others ( I have not found another like it yet).

Location Sites:

Lets talk about Foursquare, Google Latitude, Loopt, Brightkite, etc these use GPS enabled cellular phones. They are designed to broadcast one’s real time location either as public information or as an update viewable to authorized contacts. Most of these sites are built for third party interaction. Like you check in on Foursquare and broadcast it on Facebook or Twitter.

Content Sharing Sites:

These are also my favourites as I’m becoming a content junkie. For them, it is all about sharing content such as music, photography, videos and written. These have the ability to create personal profiles, establish contacts and interact with other users plus other sites. This is done through comments, enabling sharing buttons. Sites like Instagram, Flickr, Tumblr, YouTube, thesixtyone fall in this type.

Shared Interest Sites:

Another favourite of mine falls here, LinkedIn. These are built around common interests geared to specific groups of people. For them it is all about incorporation of features from other sites targeted towards a subset of individuals through their hobbies, educational background, political affiliations, ethnic backgrounds, religious views and other defining interests. Examples of such sites include deviantART, Black Planet, Goodreads.

These have been the types of social sites I have interacted with, but if you have any other please share.

Patricia Kahill

Patricia Kahill is a multipotentialite Christian entrepreneur, Content Marketing Coach and founder of the Content Marketing agency, Kahill Insights that helps business owners create engaging and interactive content items for digital platforms with a focus on returning a desired outcome. Patricia was the producer of SlamDunk Basketball Talk a show on House of Talent online TV, a former fellow at Harvest Institute for leadership and now an assessor there, and an alumnus of the YELP class of 2017. A member of the BNI Integrity chapter and African Women Entrepreneur Cooperative. She is driven by passion and curiosity, been taking every opportunity that has been given to her with an ambition of stamping her footprint on the world.