Intelligence Collection: Social Media

With the popularity of social media, more and more people are using it not only for social communication, but also as an intelligence gathering tool. On social media, users can send information to the outside world by posting content, liking, commenting and other activities.

This information may include personal information of certain people, news about specific fields, social hotspots, etc., which are valuable resources for intelligence collection. First, to obtain valuable intelligence, you need to choose the right social media platform.

Today, all major social media platforms have their unique characteristics and user groups. Choosing the right platform can make it easier and more accurate to obtain valuable intelligence. Second, establish a clear goal for intelligence collection. This can help us focus more on collecting information related to the target.

For example, if we want to understand the views, preferences or whereabouts of a specific group, we can follow their social media accounts or search for hashtags related to them, so we can more accurately collect intelligence on that group.

Most importantly, it is important to protect personal information and privacy. In social media, personal information can be compromised at any time. Therefore, when collecting intelligence, it is important to comply with relevant laws and regulations and not to violate the privacy and human rights of others. At the same time, we should also protect our personal privacy and avoid overexposure. We can choose to protect our privacy by using screen names and masking personal information.

1. Facebook

Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by the American technology giant Meta Platforms. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes, its name derives from the face book directories often given to American university students.

As of December 2022, Facebook claims to have 2.96 billion active users per month and ranks as the third most visited website in the world.

Facebook can be accessed from devices with Internet connections such as personal computers, tablets, and smartphones. After registering, users can create a profile to display information about themselves. They can post text, photos and multimedia and share them with any other user who agrees to be their "friend" or post them publicly through different privacy settings. Users can also use Messenger to communicate directly with each other, join common interest groups, and receive notifications about Facebook Friends events and following pages.

2. Twitter

Twitter is a micro-blogging social platform that has conquered the world and is based in San Francisco, USA. Its main function is to allow users to post and share information in no more than 140 characters. Both regular users and government agencies and officials have found their stage on Twitter.

As of 2018, Twitter has more than 350 million active users, and the number of tweets posted every day is as high as 400 million, which fully demonstrates the strong influence of Twitter in the field of information dissemination and social communication.

On October 27, 2022, Elon Musk acquired Twitter for $44 billion, gaining control of the platform. Since the acquisition, the platform has been criticized for fostering content containing hate speech.

On December 20, 2022, Musk announced that he would step down as CEO once a replacement was found, and on May 12, 2023, Musk announced that he would step down as CEO in approximately six weeks and that Linda Yaccarino, the former head of ad sales at NBCUniversal, would become the new CEO.

3. LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the world's largest professional networking platform, headquartered in Mountain View, California. It is dedicated to providing a one-stop career development platform for individuals and companies. As of 2020, LinkedIn has more than 600 million users in more than 200 countries and regions around the world.

4. Discord

https://discord.com/

Discord is a free web-based real-time calling software and digital distribution platform designed for the community, targeting gamers, educators, friends and business people. Users can communicate with each other via messages, pictures, video and audio in the software's chat channel. The software is available on Microsoft Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, Linux and the Web.

As of 2021, the service has more than 350 million registered users and more than 150 million monthly active users.

5. Instagram

https://www.instagram.com/

Instagram, a social application and platform mainly for sharing photos on mobile, was acquired by Facebook in 2012. Instagram has a huge user base, which has exceeded 1 billion in 2018.

Instagram also contains a lot of social elements, in addition to general functions such as building friendships, replying or sharing, as well as features such as name tags for quick interaction with strangers.

6. Pinterest

https://www.pinterest.com/

Pinterest is a world-renowned photo sharing social networking site based in Palo Alto, California, USA. Not only can it be categorized by multiple tags by theme, it is also a highly creative tool for personal image collection and visual exploration.

Similar to Twitter, users can save images of interest on Pinterest and share them with other networkers. This has made Pinterest a popular social application, attracting millions of users worldwide with its innovative and interactive nature.

7. VKontakte

https://vk.com/

VKontakte, or VK for short, is a well-known online social networking site of Russian origin, based in the Virgin Islands, and is one of the largest websites in Russia, with a majority of its users being citizens of Russian-speaking countries.

VK is very similar to Facebook in that users can post their own blogs in the form of pictures, videos, voice and location information, while allowing other users to leave public messages or comments.

8. Tumblr

https://www.tumblr.com/

Born in 2007, Tumblr is one of the world's largest light blogging sites, based in New York, USA. It combines the strengths of traditional blogs and micro-blogs, featuring stream-of-consciousness-style trivial narratives that allow users to document their lives in short blogs and share multimedia and other content.

In addition to having the usual features like commenting and sharing, bloggers can enjoy many interesting features in Tumblr's dashboard. In this innovative way, Tumblr has played a very important role in the establishment and growth of light blogging sites.

9. Snapchat

Snapchat is a multimedia social instant messaging application focused on mobile. Currently, users can easily use it on Android and iOS platforms. One of its most attractive features is its "burn after reading" feature, which limits the lifetime of each message to less than 10 seconds.

Originally dedicated to photo sharing between users, Snapchat now offers not only a rich set of built-in filters, lenses and stickers for photos and videos, but also user stories and discovery features, which are arranged chronologically, as well as augmented reality and many other interesting features.

10. WhatsApp

WhatsApp Messenger, or WhatsApp for short, is a free communication application owned by Facebook that enables cross-platform messaging and voice delivery between smartphones and PCs. The application allows users to send text, voice, and video messages and share media such as pictures, documents, and locations.

Use of the service requires users to provide a standard cellular cell phone number for registration. As of 2018, WhatsApp has reached Brazil, India, Pakistan and most of Europe, with more than 1.5 billion users worldwide.

11. Skype

Skype is an instant messaging application that provides video calls and voice calls to and from other connected devices or traditional phones/smartphones through system devices that have an Internet connection including cell phones, tablets, etc. Users can send and receive instant messages, transfer files, send and receive multimedia messages, and conduct video conferences through Skype.

12. Telegram

Telegram is a Russian instant messaging software, released in 2013 and co-founded by the founder of the Russian social networking platform VK. Telegram allows users to exchange encrypted messages and "burn after reading" messages with each other in the form of photos, videos, audio, etc.

13. Flickr

https://www.flickr.com/

Flickr is an image hosting service and video hosting service platform created in 2004. Flickr offers two types of accounts: a free version and a professional version. The free version can currently store only 1,000 photos and videos, and the length of videos is limited to 3 minutes, while the pro version has unlimited storage space.

When users upload images to Flickr, the images will form a photo stream, all of which can be displayed in a logical view and can be displayed in a slideshow. Users can tag their images with captions and text descriptions, and these options make the images easily searchable in Flickr.

Users can organize Flickr photos into albums, and Flickr also provides the ability to embed albums into blogs, websites, and forums.

Flickr can apply geotags to photos in albums, and any album with geotags can be associated with a map using imapflickr. Flickr albums can be organized into collections, and they themselves can be further organized into higher-level collections.

14. Meetup

https://www.meetup.com/

Meetup is a service platform for organizing online groups, founded in 2002 and based in New York, USA. The platform hosts face-to-face events for people with similar interests, making it easy to start and run communities with common areas or interests. Users can connect online with people who share similar interests through Meetup, which also offers a richly organized format of workshops and events.

In addition, the time, location, and topic of events are user-determined, and users can search for and participate in interest groups that match common goals by searching for zip codes, event areas, and interest tags on the site.

15. Mixi

https://mixi.co.jp/en/

Mixi is a Japanese online social networking service founded in 1999 and headquartered in Shibuya, Tokyo. It is the most popular and widest-reaching social networking platform in Japan. Mixi's focus is on community entertainment, i.e. meeting new people based on common interests. Users can send and receive multiple forms of messages on Mixi, and are able to journal, read and comment on others' journals.

Unlike Facebook, young people in Japan, especially young women, prefer Mixi as a private way to connect with close friends, rather than a public network like Facebook. Signing up for Mixi requires a valid Japanese phone number, thus limiting the scope of social interaction strictly within Japan.

16. Odnoklassniki

https://ok.ru/

OK, or Odnoklassniki, which translates to "classmates", is a social networking service from Russia that has been operating for 15 years, mainly for classmates and old friends. It is very popular in Russia and the former Soviet Union, and is one of the top 10 most visited websites in Russia.

Although second only to VK in terms of users, OK has an equally broad reach, covering a wide range of age groups, with a user age limit of 7 years old and above.