There are hundreds of social networks, of course we have all heard about Facebook, MySpace, Linkedin, and dozens of others that are equally popular. Then there are some that are not popular in the US, but are popular in other countries. Orkut, a Google product, is popular in Brazil, HI5 is popular in Europe, and some social systems are only popular in some countries or geographic regions.

In the USA the big three are Facebook, MySpace, and Linkedin. Each of these platforms all perform their own niche functions. Facebook is seen as a way to keep in touch with family, friends, and find interesting people that are worth following. MySpace tends to attract the young crowd, those between the ages of 13 and 24, while Linkedin is seen as a professional network where you make and maintain important business contacts as people move from job to job or state to state.

You can see these differences in the advertising alone. Facebook advertising tends to be more staid, solid, and geared towards a crowd that does not want/like “bling”. As shown next to this paragraph, Facebook ads tend to match with the overall user design, simple colors, no flashing ads, and probably not as effective as they could be because they blend into the background and are easily ignored by people. The other effect of this is that they seem to be part of the content, leading to the potential for more clicks on those ads. Facebook does not release the numbers on how well their ads on their pages lead to clicks and to money so we do not really know how well they are doing.

The overall look and feel of Facebook though tends to a particular crowd. If you look at the quanticast numbers for demographics of Facebook you can see that they also tend to attract a more affluent audience than MySpace. Facebook users are also considered more educated than those on MySpace, which also means that there are going to be differences on how advertising is used on those sites. MySpace advertising is all over the map and flashy (shown below), compared to what Facebook advertising looks like. That means much when it comes to what social network do you want to participate in, and how you want to be perceived online. If you send people to your blinged MySpace page, those people will make an immediate judgment about your personality, where the controlled environment of Facebook also leads to an immediate judgment, but one that will tend to be more professional (depending on what you put on your Facebook page).

Linkedin is much the same as Facebook in that they provide a professional atmosphere for people, and the User Interface (UI) looks much like what you would see in a rolodex, or in your contacts sheet in Outlook or Google Mail. Linkedin tries to make your Linkedin page look and feel like a resume, along with your contacts delivered in an organized and professional manner. The view on this is not just comfort of the familiar for users, but very smart when it comes to working with people who need to have organization come from the system. Not everyone alphabetizes their business cards for easy access. Linkedin does this for you. The advertising on Linkedin also adds to the professional look and feel. The inability to “bling” your Linkedin page also provides a uniformity of experience for everyone that has paid off handsomely for Linkedin.

Depending on what image you want to portray on the internet defines what social systems you will interact with. This is an important consideration, who are your friends, and what image do you want to have on the internet?

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