Social Media Surveillance: Platforms Every PI Should Know

Private investigators are often called upon to investigate cases involving social media, such as harassment, fraud, hacked accounts, identity theft, catfishing, and stalking. Understanding social media networks is essential for planning social media surveillance efforts. Social networking websites allow you to connect and interact with a network of other people through personal websites, weblogs, online chat, photo sharing, discussion groups, and more.

Social Networking Services

A social network service focuses on building online communities of people who share interests and activities or are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others. Most social network services are web-based and provide various ways for users to interact, such as email, instant messaging services, blogs, photo sharing, and more. 

Social networking has encouraged new ways to communicate and share information. Millions of people worldwide regularly use social networking websites. While email and websites have most of the essential elements of social network services, the idea of proprietary encapsulated services has gained popularity.

The main types of social networking website services contain category divisions (such as former school years or classmates), ways to connect with friends (usually through self-description pages), and a recommendation system.

Most of the companies on this list of social media network sites combine many of these functions, with Facebook widely used worldwide; MySpace, and LinkedIn are the most commonly used in North America; Nexopia (mainly in Canada); Bebo, Hi5, dol2day (mainly in Germany), Tagged, XING; Badoo and Skyrock in parts of Europe; Orkut, Friendster, Multiply, Wretch, Xiaonei and Cyworld in Asia and the Pacific Islands.  See below for a list of social networking website services.

Some attempts have been made to standardize these social networking services to avoid duplicating entries of friends and interests, but this has led to some concerns about privacy.

List of Social Media Networks

Following is a list of social media networks with a brief description of each company to aid in social media surveillance efforts.

Badoo is a worldwide online community that allows its members to communicate and share their lives with people locally and globally. Its users can gain an instant mass audience for themselves and their work and have direct control over the size of their audience. Its patented system allows members to activate features that instantly increase their profile exposure. Badoo offers instant messaging, photo and video uploads, and transparency into who views your profile and individual albums.

Bluesky—Bluesky is a decentralized social network that fosters open, interconnected online communities. Built on the open-source AT Protocol, it emphasizes user control, portability, and innovation. Bluesky aims to empower users by enabling custom algorithms, diverse apps, and seamless data ownership, promoting transparency and freedom in social media interaction and content sharing.

CraigsList – CraigsList is a nationwide list of local classifieds and forums moderated by the community and free—jobs, housing, goods, services, romance, local activities, advice – about anything.

Facebook – Facebook is a free social networking utility that connects you with the people around you.  Facebook allows you to upload photos or publish notes, get the latest news from your friends, post videos on your profile, tag your friends, use privacy settings to control who sees your info, and join a network to see people who live, study, or work around you. Facebook is the most popular company on this list of social media networks. Some consider Messenger its platform, but we think it is simply the messaging app for Facebook.

Hi5—Headquartered in San Francisco, CA, hi5 is one of the world’s largest social networks. Alexa ranks hi5 as one of the top 20 websites globally and is the #1 social network in over 30 countries across Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. Hi5 is a globally diverse social networking site, with over 80% of our users from outside the US. The hi5.com site was designed for this global audience and was the first in-language social networking site in many countries worldwide.

Instagram – Instagram is a social media network focused mainly on sharing photos and videos. Facebook owns it.

LinkedIn – LinkedIn is a social networking website that allows you to find past and present colleagues and classmates quickly. LinkedIn makes staying in touch simple. It will enable you to make inside connections when you’re looking for a job or a new business opportunity.

Mastodon—Mastodon is a decentralized, open-source social media platform that operates on a concept called “federation.” Unlike centralized platforms like Facebook, where all users are part of a single network owned and controlled by a single company, Mastodon consists of multiple independent communities called “instances.” Each instance functions as a mini social network with its rules, themes, and user base.

MySpace is an online social networking community that lets you meet your friends’ friends. Create a community on MySpace to share photos, journals, and interests with your growing network of mutual friends. However, MySpace has dropped considerably in popularity in recent years.

Orkut is Google’s original social networking site. You can share with groups of friends, controlling who sees what. You can also chat, comment, and talk with each group of friends for a conversation you control. You can share photos, videos, and news. You can also join communities to discuss topics of interest.

Pinterest – A website that allows users to share their interests by “pinning” images to “boards” on their profile. Pinterest has grown into a massive database of visual objects, with tens of billions of photos posted to date and more added daily.

Reddit – Reddit is a social news aggregation service that allows users to vote on content.

SnapChat – Snapchat is a multi-media messaging app.

Tagged – Make a great profile that’s all about you.  Find your friends and meet new people.  Chat, flirt, photos, games, and more!

TikTok—TikTok is a video-sharing social site owned by ByteDance, a Chinese company. The platform allows users to post videos from a few seconds to one minute. In 2021, it was the most visited website.

Tinder is primarily known as an app for meeting people. Users view photographs of other people and swipe the photo to the left or right to indicate whether or not they are interested.

Truth Social – Positioned as a platform to provide a space for conservative voices and viewpoints, addressing concerns about alleged bias and censorship on existing social media platforms. It was presented as an alternative platform where users with right-leaning perspectives could express their opinions freely.

Tumblr—Unlike most other sites, Tumblr allows users to establish and update a blog.

Twitter (Now known as X) – A San Francisco, CA social networking website. People can use the platform to follow the sources most relevant to them and access information in real time as it happens – from breaking world news to updates from friends. In the past few years, the company struggled to demonstrate organic user growth, which led to disappointing earnings. The company is working to right the ship by introducing features like live streaming, expanded character limits, and more. We do not recommend using this social network due to significant misinformation. Learn how to delete your Twitter account.

WeChat—WeChat, known as Weixin in China, is a multipurpose messaging and social media platform developed by Tencent. It was first released in 2011 and quickly became one of the most popular apps in China and other parts of Asia. WeChat offers a wide range of features beyond simple messaging. Users can send text and voice messages, make voice and video calls, share photos and videos, and create group chats. However, what sets WeChat apart is its diverse ecosystem of functionalities.

WhatsApp—WhatsApp is a widely used platform that enables users to send text messages, make voice and video calls, and share various media, such as photos, videos, and documents. It was founded in 2009 and acquired by Facebook (now Meta) in 2014.

Xanga is an online social networking website and community. You can start a free weblog on Xanga, share photos and videos, and meet new friends.

XING—XING—the business network. Over 7 million business professionals use XING, the global business network, in 16 languages daily to do business and promote their careers. XING simplifies networking and professional contact management with made-to-measure networking functions and services. It also lets you see how people are connected, which is an excellent tool for generating new contacts. With the XING Jobs portal, expert groups, and networking events, XING is a web interface for business professionals worldwide.

Discontinued / Retired Social Networks

Bebo is a popular social site connecting users to everything they care about. It combines community, self-expression, and entertainment, enabling users to create, discover, curate, and share digital content in new ways. Bebo has sites in the US, UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Poland, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, India, and the Netherlands.

BuddyFetch—BuddyFetch was a social search engine that allowed users to connect with others on the Internet based on their occupations, hobbies, interests, and more. Instead of having users search thousands of social networks, IM networks, and dating sites, this site worked for them.

CrushSpot – CrushSpot.com was an online social networking community website for meeting new people online and for platonic and romantic relationships. CrushSpot allows the user to create a user profile, upload pictures, and send members public messages on their message boards or private messages in notes. CrushSpot users also had a blog. Also, they had a forum for public discussion on various topics.

Diaspora—Diaspora is an open-source social network platform that recently released its code and opened to private alpha invites. During Facebook’s privacy fiasco, the platform was dubbed the alternative to Facebook and generated a lot of buzz. Diaspora lets you sort your connections into groups called aspects. Unique to Diaspora, aspects ensure that your photos, stories, and jokes are shared only with the people you intend.

Google+ (discontinued): Google+ makes connecting on the web more like connecting in the real world. Share your thoughts, links, and photos with the right circles. Use easy, spontaneous video chat to start. You can position yourself with as many as nine people simultaneously.

Nexopia—This social network website was initially designed to protest his high school’s banning of floppy discs. It continues to revolutionize the way young people connect online. While growing like wildfire, Nexopia has retained its rebellious roots and ultimately become the place for teens looking to express themselves to the world.

Skyrock—The SkyRock social network website allows you to post unlimited photos, videos, and texts in your blog, make new friends, chat with people worldwide, and view tons of images, videos, and profiles.

Yahoo 360—Yahoo 360 was an online social networking website and community that allowed users to create blogs and share photos, interests, and what mattered to them. It is no longer active.

Questions and Comments

If you have questions about social media surveillance or the list of social networking websites, please post a message below. You can also see more Lists of Lists.