The Top Five Social Media Websites Online Today

Social Media sites are basically communities where like minded people gather to share information and experiences. They are viewed everyday by massive numbers of people and these same people actually generate the content for these sites. These sites are growing in importance because they contain information users find interesting, timely and informative and they are becoming a target for Internet Marketers who see them as an untapped reservoir of potential clients.

The top five Social Media websites in terms of Inbound Links, Google Page Rank, Alexa Rank, and U.S. traffic data from Compete and Quantcast are lead by MySpace. MySpace is a popular social networking website offering an interactive, user-submitted network of friends, personal profiles, blogs, groups, photos, music and videos for people internationally.

It is one of the most successful sites in recent years, amassing 124 million profiles and has transformed life online since its launch. MySpace is one of the most visited sites in the world and it's introducing a huge number of people to content syndication and they allow millions of people around the world to publish to the web for the first time.

It is by far the dominant social network in the US and is at an all time high in terms of audience reach and engagement according to both comScore and Neilsen. Coming in second is Wikipedia. Wikipedia is booming in terms of visitors and contributors. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, for the most part written by the masses and therefore should be viewed accordingly.

It is meant to be a starting point, a place to go for basic information and therefore it's like any encyclopedia, a place to begin your research but not a place to end it. Wikipedia is full of information, but this doesn't mean that it's all reliable information. Wikipedia is a good example of the new Web 2.0 and is a fine first step to get the basics quickly, especially for technology and pop culture related questions.

It's a wonderful resource if you use your own judgment and don't always believe what you read. It is supported by a non-profit organization and exists to serve information in an open platform. Anyone can edit it and, of course, this opens it up for all the issues and inaccuracies that come with an open platform. However, Wikipedia is a wonderful resource and often provides excellent summaries and detailed articles.

In third place we have YouTube. YouTube is a video sharing website where users can upload, view and share video clips. Founded in February 2005, and based in San Mateo, California, they specialize in showing short videos created by everyday people. YouTube is a consumer media company for people to watch and share original videos worldwide through a Web experience.

It is the most popular site to visit for viewing online videos, sharing your favorite videos and for commenting on what you've seen. A slightly newer feature of YouTube is the ability to send invitations to people through email by using the "Invite Your Friends" feature.

In fourth place we have Facebook. According to Wikipedia: "Facebook is a social networking website launched on February 4, 2004. The free-access website is privately owned and operated by Facebook, Inc. Users can join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and region to connect and interact with other people. People can also add friends and send them messages, and update their personal profile to notify friends about themselves."

Finally, at number five we have Photobucket. Photobucket is a photo-sharing and hosting site owned by News Corp. Photobucket is a photo and video tool that could become an online warehouse for the storage of digital media.

It is the Web's most popular creative focal point, with nearly 40 million unique users around the world linking billions of personal photos, graphics and videos daily to hundreds of thousands of websites. It's a tool that allows users to host images for use on social networking, e-commerce, gaming and blogging sites.

These sites are all about shared experiences and are based on the technology of Web 2.0. Social media sites are where people come together online to interact, share experiences and make friends. When formulating your Social Media Marketing strategy these five sites are the ones to target in order to make your presence known in the social media network and to drive this traffic to your website. They are the new wave online and it's a wave which doesn't appear to be going out anytime soon.