What is a Bio on Social Media?
A bio is a short text description that appears on an user's profile page that is written by that user that serves as a way for the user to introduce themselves to others. It's also called "profile description."
What Social Media Have Bios?
Practically every social media website has a bio or equivalent: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Mastodon, Bluesky, Reddit, Tumblr, Youtube, and TikTok, for example.
The exact format of the bio varies, but in general they're short text.
In some social media there are hard restrictions on the length of the bio, e.g. it must be 300 characters or fewer, while in others, particularly on Youtube, you can write a very long bio, but only the first few lines will be visible normally, and to see the rest a visitor must click an button to show the rest of the bio.
Questions and Answers
Where does the term "Bio" come from?
Bio is likely an abbreviation of "biography"1.
What is linktr.ee?
Link tree [https://linktr.ee/] is an online service that lets you create your own page with its own URL that contains only links to other pages related to you (e.g. my Instagram, my Twitter, my Youtube, my TikTok, etc.). It's popular on social media websites like Instagram that allow you to include only one link in your bio. On Youtube and Mastodon, for example, you can place as many links as you wish on your profile, thus the service isn't as popular on these platforms.
References
- https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bio (accesssed 2024-09-04) ↩︎
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