Social Media Showdown

Differentiating between platforms can be tricky. Today, we’ll explore the similarities and differences between popular platforms to help you choose the best one for your needs.

Social Media by Christiaan Colen license under CC BY-SA 2.0

Facebook and TikTok

Facebook and TikTok both share a common role as platforms for social interaction. They each provide users with the ability to create and share content, discover new media and engage with others. Facebook, the largest social networking platform with currently over 3 billion active monthly users, is designed for connecting people and maintaining relationships (Statista, 2024). The platform focuses closely on connecting family and friends whilst also facilitating participation in community activities and events (Heinze, Fletcher, & Cruz, 2020). In contrast, TikTok operates mainly as a social media platform, where users are more likely to be engaging with social media content rather than hosting events and connecting communities. TikTok is known for being highly addictive, allowing users to scroll through hundreds of fast paced short-form videos. Rather than using the platform to stay updated on friends, family and community events, TikTok users are primarily consuming entertainment from creators they don’t’ know. TikTok’s focus on entertainment also branches into music, proving a platform for artists to go viral and for users to create videos with their songs (Arlia, 2023). Overall, both platforms allow for easy content creation and interaction, while Facebook focuses on personal and professional networking, TikTok focuses on fast entertainment.

Pinterest and Instagram

Pinterest and Instagram are great platforms for sharing visual content to audiences. Both platforms allow users to post images, discover content and follow other users. However, the ways in which users interact and the types of content created are quite different. Pinterest is used more as a visual discovery tool to help users with inspiration, organizing and planning (Pinterest, 2024). Users create boards and pin content related to specific themes or projects. This is different to Instagram’s main purpose of sharing real-time moments and networking opportunities. Most of the content on Pinterest comes from other online sources and content is often recycled. This is compared to Instagram where users are creating and editing new photos, videos and reels. Instagram is more tailored towards personal connections, proving a platform for individuals and businesses to post their latest updates, works and milestones to highly engaged audiences (Heinze, Fletcher, & Cruz, 2020). Another difference is content engagement. On Pinterest, users save pins for future reference as they organize content over time. Meanwhile, Instagram encourages users to engage immediately by liking and commenting on posts. As a result, Instagram creates a more interactive networking environment, while Pinterest focuses on long-term planning and inspiration.

Flickr and DeviantArt

Flickr and DeviantArt are platforms that allow users to upload, share and explore a wide range of visual content through a gallery format. Both platforms are a space for community interaction and enable users to create profiles to showcase and potentially monetize their work. Despite these similarities, the type of content and audiences they attract are different. Flickr appeals to the photography community, focusing on sharing and organizing high quality, original photos and videos (Flickr, 2024). In contrast, DeviantArt is dedicated to the art community, hosting over 550 million pieces of diverse art (DeviantArt, 2024a). DeviantArt offers a collaborative environment for artists and art enthusiasts, also incorporating a badge system recognizing achievements and contributions to the community. These badges celebrate things such as participation in contests and creativity (DeviantArt, 2024b). While Flickr provides tools for community interaction, it doesn’t have a similar system for recognizing user achievements. Even though both platforms are used for similar functions, Flickr supports photographic needs whereas DeviantArt is tailored towards an art environment. 

Vimeo and YouTube

Popular video-sharing platforms Vimeo and YouTube both provide users with the ability to upload, share and view video content.  Both platforms include features for creating channels, managing and editing content, and interacting with community. YouTube the bigger platform, with over 2.5 billion active monthly users, supports a diverse array of video content (Statista, 2024). There are endless categories of videos making it the go-to platform for any video needs. YouTube has a heavy focus on entertainment, increasing view numbers and growing subscriptions. Vimeo on the other hand is much smaller and tailors itself more towards connecting people just within the film industry (Vimeo, 2024). There is more of a focus on constructive feedback, allowing video professional to closely network.  This is something you would rarely see on YouTube were everything is more for clicks and views. Vimeo also offers a cleaner viewing experience with no ads, compared to YouTube which integrates advertisements all across its platform. Ultimately the key difference between the two video sharing platforms is who they are targeting towards.

References

Arlia, Z. (2023). 4 Reason why TikTok is more than a social media platform. Emplifi. https://emplifi.io/resources/blog/why-tiktok-is-more-than-a-social-media-platform

Deviant Art. (2024a). What are Profile badges. DeviantArt Support. https://www.deviantartsupport.com/kb/en/article/what-are-profile-badges#:~:text=Profile%20badges%20are%20flair%20for,Llama%20badges%20to%20other%20deviants.

DeviantArt. (2024b). About DeviantArt. DeviantArt https://www.deviantart.com/about

Flickr. (2024). About Flickr. Flickr https://www.flickr.com/about

Heinze, A., Fetcher, G., & Cruz, A. (2020). Digital and Social Media Marketing: A Results-Driven Approach. Taylor & Francis Group.

Pinterest. (2024). All about Pinterest. Pinterest Help. https://help.pinterest.com/en/guide/all-about-pinterest

Statista. (2024). Most popular social networks worldwide as of April 2024, by number of monthly active users. Statista. https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-networks-ranked-by-number-of-users/

Vimeo. (2024). About. Vimeo. https://vimeo.com/about