Today: Social networks are ubiquitous. It is predicted that there are more social networking accounts than people on the planet. They are one of the main means of communication. We use them to stay connected with friends and family, as well as to stay informed about local and world news events. As an important note, when considering the use of these social media sites, it doesn't take long to realize the potential exposure a business could have, if they choose to leverage it. The evolution of social networks has introduced a completely new sales and marketing channel. The impacts and revenues generated by this sector will be the focus of this report. Competitors and their market share Depending on who conducted the survey and the structure of the questions, the ranking of the 15 most popular social networking sites varies significantly. With the exception that Facebook is by far the #1 most popular. And Twitter is consistently the #1 site. 2 in the rankings. eBizMBA's most recent study, as of April 1, 2014, shows the top 5 rankings as follows:1 – Facebook with 900,000,000 – Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors2 – Twitter with 310,000,000 – Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors3 – LinkedIn with 250,000,000 – Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors4 – Pinterest with 150,000,000 – Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors5 – Google Plus+ with 120,000,000 – Estimated Unique Monthly VisitorsIt should be assumed that marketers focus efforts on generating revenue from the most popular sites; however, there are additional factors that must be considered. For example, is the site consumer in line with the typical market consumer? It wouldn't make sense to do marketing on a popular site...... middle of paper......sual.ly/social-media-market-share-2013• http://www.ebizmba.com /articles /social-networking-websites• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter• https://blog.twitter.com/2013/vine-a-new-way-to-share-video • http ://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/20/twitter-rolls-out-easier-faster-video-playback/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0• http://www.sramanamitra. com/ 2014/02/11/twitters-strategy-for-addressing-slowing-user-growth/• http://www.cnbc.com/id/101175790• http://a16z.com/2014/02/25 /future -of-news-business/• http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/14/twitter-co-founder-evan-williams-lays-out-his-vision-for-medium/• https:/ /twitter .com/• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter• http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-29/twitter-user-growth-slows-as-mobile- chat- the competitors-guadagnano-steam.html• http://allthingsd.com/20131216/twitter-promoted-account-ads-for-mobile-go-mainstream/