Charlie Brett's media blog: Unit 35 social media

	Facebook	Twitter	Instagram
Purpose	Facebook was founded in 2004 with a mission to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected. People use Facebook to stay connected with their family and friends, to discover what is going on in the world and also to share and express what matters to them. “We are building Facebook to make the world more open and transparent, which we believe will create a greater understanding and connection.”	Twitter, one of the most popular social networking services in the world, it is a micro blogging platform which allows registered users to post and send messages to other registered users. These short posts and limited to 140 characters and are called tweets. “To give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers.”	Instagram is an online mobile photo-sharing, video sharing and social networking service that enables its users to take pictures and videos, and share them on a variety of social networking platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler and Flickr. “To capture and share the worlds moments”
Content	On Facebook there is a range of things you can do on it, you can receive notifications, share posts from other people, advertise companies, play games, and send links, file and more.	Twitter has a range of things you can do it has notifications, privet messaging, posts, and various their features.	Instagram has fewer features than Facebook and Twitter, but you can share photos that you take to other social media.
Target user/membership	The target audience for Facebook tends to be used by younger people who create profiles when they are under the age rating, to get Facebook you have to be at least 13 but you can just lie about your age.	The target audience for twitter tend to be for older people as not many younger people are interested in any sort of blogging and this is the main focus of twitter.	The target audience for Instagram is people who like to take pictures and share them with people, there is a wide range of people on Instagram.
Sources of revenue	Facebook makes money through all of its adverts and information. Companies pay for adverts and they can give information like what things you have liked so they can work out if you’re the right target demographic for their product.	Twitters revenue comes from advertising like Facebook but twitter will have companies bid over certain advertising spots.	Instagram gets revenue the same way as Facebook and twitter, this is simply by advertising for other companies.
Legal/ethical issues	Facebook has a few legal and ethical issues but these are because of the users, there can be stalkers on Facebook who create fake profiles to stalk people but this is fixed with security settings available making people not able to see your profile.	Twitter has a live news feed from other companies like BBC news so there isn’t many legal and ethical issues the only issues are possible cyber stalking or cyber bullying.	Instagram has a few issues for example sometimes random accounts will follow you on Instagram that contain explicit content not suitable for younger people, these accounts are called ‘bots’ because they aren’t real people just computer generated accounts used to advertise.

A example of a Facebook page:
The various features can be seen for example: the advertising is on the right of the screen and messaging is shown when you click chat in the bottom of the screen.

3 possible benefits of social media:

1. Users can keep in touch with family or friends that they don't see in person. For example if a family member moved to another country you could message them for free on Facebook, Twitter or most other social networks.

2. They can be used to show people pictures or videos of events if they cant show them in person. Instagram is the best example of this as the main purpose of Instagram is to share photos or videos.

3. Social media can be a good way to get employed now days as many people use social media. If someone who wanted to become a photographer posted their pictures they take on Instagram they could get a lot of followers and get popular for their photos.

3 possible negatives of social media:

1. Social networks have people that can easily create fake profile and stalk/ cyber bully others. This is most commonly done on Facebook.

2. Accounts can be hacked meaning people can pose as you or get hold of personal information. I f someone hacked your profile they could pot things that could make people dislike you and this could ruin peoples lives.

3. Social media can give away various details about you to companies meaning you will get adverts and stuff popping up a lot which can be distracting and some adverts can even lead to websites with viruses.