Social networks

Nowadays, social networking services are used by millions of people around the world. Young people are the most common users of these networks which are making our way of keeping in touch with friends, relatives and also with strangers, easier. We asked to the students in our class if they were users of any social network and which one they prefered. The result was surprising. The majority of them are users of a social network and some students use more than one. You must have heard about some of them for sure.

Facebook is the most popular network between the students in the class. Initially, Mark Zuckerberg created it as a website for the students of Harvard University. But now it is opened to all the people who have Internet and an email account. Users can create their profiles adding photographies, a list of personal interests, contact information and other personal information. They can also communicate with friends and other users through private or public messages.

Tuenti is very similar to Facebook and was created in Spain in 2006 by Félix Ruiz, Zaryn Dentzel, Kenny Bentley, Adeyemi Ajao and Joaquín Ayuso de Pául. It is adressed to students and young people. Tuenti, pronounced in Spanish, sounds like Twenty in English. The name, however, actually comes from "tu enti[dad]," meaning  "your identity because you can set up a profile, upload photos, link videos, connect with friends and talk by chat application. This social network is very popular in Spain but not much in Catalonia and only a few students in the class have a profile in it.

Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey. It’s an online social networking service and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based messages of up to 140 characters, known as "tweets". Some of the keywords to use and understand this page are "Trending Topic" and "Hashtag". A Hashtag is a word or a phrase prefixed with the symbol #, it is also used informally to express context around a given message and a Trending Topic is a word, phrase or topic thar has been searched and published many times around the world in a short period of time. People in twitter usually don't know each other and it's becoming very popular.

Apart from these networks there are other new services that allow us to communicate, be entretained and have some fun. Some services are very new but they are spreading quickly between young people like us.

WhatsApp Messenger is an application for smartphones. In addition to text messaging, users can send each other images, video, and audio media messages. This app is free during the first year, after it you have to pay 0’99 euros a year. Some people don’t want to pay it and look fot others alternatives.  


Line is another application with the same options as Whatsapp, the difference is that it is new and free nowadays. Almost everybody in our class has Whatsapp installed but maybe in some years Line will become the most used.

If you've got an smarphone, you can also download Instagram, an online photo-sharing and social networking service which was created in 2010. It enables its users to take pictures, apply digital filters to the photos and share them on Facebook or Twitter. Many students enjoy taking photos and sharing them with friends.

Skype is a service and a software application that allows users to communicate by voice using a microphone, by video using a webcam, and instant messaging over the Internet. Now is an application very used for people to talk with friends or family when they're far away and even it's used to do jobs interviews.

Spotify is a new digital music service that enables to listen different songs on various record labels, share them with friends, create lists of music and follow your friends from a laptop, smartphone or other device.

Asking our classmates we have discovered these different and interesting services, so... if we had asked more people what would we have discovered?

Edith and Ainoa