They can be categorized as
- Social Networks – These are the websites that individuals use to connect with friends or others with similar interests by making a profile. These are often used to connect with old friends or to find new ones, social networks are some of the most popular sites on the Internet. Some of the social networks are.
- Facebook: Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook in 2004 to allow other college students to keep in touch with their friends. Now Facebook is one of the most popular websites in the S. has been growing virally throughout the world.
- Myspace: This is another popular social network. Founded in 2003, it has grown to over 100 million accounts and was acquired by News Corporation in 2006.
- Linkedin: LinkedIn is a network that connects professionals in all disciplines all over the world. LinkedIn is intended for those who are business-oriented, and is best described as a “virtual resume” and social network connecting professionals who have interacted with one another in both the personal and professional realms. It is mainly used by professionals looking for better career opportunities and making links.
- Social Media Portals – There are a number of portals available online that can empower you, as a marketer, to start spreading your message. With social media portals, your current and potential customers can associate themselves with you and your brand. They do this by bookmarking a page on a social bookmarking site, becoming your fan on a Facebook product page, and voting up a story on a social news site, among other tactics.
- Social News Sites – Social news sites rely on the people to vote on news stories that individuals think should be exposed to a larger audience. In essence, when a story is submitted to a site, it has one vote. The goal of social news sites is to get the story enough votes to hit the front page. Since thousands upon thousands of visitors often do not venture farther than the front page of social news sites, getting your story there can bring hundreds of thousands of visitors to your site in a short while, with the added benefit of getting targeted links from influencers. The reason for this is that popular social news sites are regularly visited by bloggers, journalists, and other influencers who try to find their writing inspiration from content that is on the front page of these sites. If the community already endorses the content, then the writers also pass it on to their readers. Some of the popular social news sites are.
- Digg: By far, Digg is the most popular site at the moment for sharing information socially. Digg was originally launched in late 2004 with an emphasis on technology news, but it changed its game plan in early 2008 to target a much wider audience.
- Reddit: Launched in 2005, reddit is known as the second most popular news site. Reddit found big success in January 2008 when it launched subreddits, which enable users to create their own categories in which to submit stories.6 as a reddit user, you can subscribe to specific categories and get the content that you want without the clutter of other news.
- Mixx: Mixx is an up-and-coming social news contender that was founded in late 2007. It is one of the smaller social news sites, but has an incredibly passionate and active community.
- Social Bookmarking Sites – Social bookmarking sites allow you to store your favorite sites, often with metadata (tags, for example) to be retrieved at another time or in another place. While some people use social bookmarking just so that they can access their bookmarks from several computers without feeling tied down to any single location, social bookmarking also allows you to discover new content saved by your peers.
- Delicious: It is owned by yahoo. It boasts of more than 5 million users and 150 million URLs. Delicious launched a newly redesigned site that boasted impressive speeds enhanced sorting, and a stronger emphasis on networks.
- Stumble Upon: It is a unique kind of social bookmarking site. It allows you to discover content using a toolbar. When you click Stumble!, you are shown a site tailored to your interests (per your specifications when you registered). You can then provide feedback to the service as to whether you like the content or not. Based on your feedback, StumbleUpon provides additional (or fewer) pages on the specific topic.