In this post, we will analysis some existing systems in order to better understand the how they are designed and used, and the features they commonly have. In this way, we can make our software have some unique features.

In the following table, we have identified a number of existing social systems and listed their features.

Name	Description & Audience	Features
Facebook	Most popular social network in the World but restricted in some countries like China. User must be at least 13 years	Profile, News Feed, Events, Find Friends, Groups, Friends, Apps, Update Status, Add Photos, some places for
Instagram	Social network focusing on sharing pictures, innovate by using hash tags in helping users spotting pictures that they wish to see.	Profile, Explore, news, following, follower, posts(send a photo or video) like a picture or give a commend about it.
Twitter	General, people who are willing to connect with people to express the feeling of themselves.	Profile, Home, Discover, Activity, Retweet, favorite, following&follower find people or popular people and organizations.
Path	General, Social network for providing services like sharing photo and messaging	Profile, message , find friends,Music, movies & books, share through third-party like Facebook and Twitter.
Myspace	A social networking which providing music services. The user must be at least 14 years old to register,	Profile, Featured, People, Music. Videos and Radio, Discover
Flixster	A place to discover, collect and watch movie, age restriction: 13 years. Available on TV, Laptop and mobile devices as well as XBOX	Profile, Collection, Want to see, Rating, Block, get showtimes and trailer Search for movies,actors and directors.
Friendster	A Social gaming site: discover new friends play games and enjoy rewards	Games, Community, Support, Topup, Latest News, Featured games.

In-depth anaysis of Pinterest

Particularly, I will introduce a visual discovery tool-Pinterest.

Using this tool, people can collect their ideas for their different projects and interests.

 

 

 

The Figure on the left is the main interface of the Pinterest, there are some users displaying their collections or interests to share with the other users.

 

 

 

 

 

The figure on the left is the user’s profile, which may be modified. The user can to follow users and can be be followed by others. The collections of the user are called boards and the visual bookmarks are called “pins”. The user can create his own boards and save pins into it. Additionally, the user can create his secret boards hidden by others.

The figure on the right shows the list of interests. There are three ways for the users to find their interests quickly:

• By using the search bar and input the name of the interest.
• Everything tab, which lists all the interests in the following  of page, you can look for them.
• Popular tab, which lists the interests which is liked by many people.

References

Sorav Jain, 40 most popular social networking sites of the World [online]available: http://socialmediatoday.com/soravjain/195917/40-most-popular-social-networking-sites-world [accessed: 02/05/2014]