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Bebo, a social-networking website, www.bebo.com. Created by Michael and Xochi Birch. It was designed to allow friends to communicate in various ways. Users are able to put up pictures, have blogs, send e-mail, leave comments and a number of other features are also available. The site has over twenty two million registered members, with 5 people registering every second. It is the 340th most popular English language website (according to Alexa Internet), it is the second most popular website in Ireland (according to the Irish Independent). The website won a “Webby Award” in the Social-Networking category in 2006. While the website is a very useful way of staying in touch with family and friends there are some disadvantages. These include bullying and porn. Members of the site are able to view other people’s profiles and can leave whatever comments they like. There have also been reports of porn being sent in e-mails, recently there was a story in the Limerick Post about a twelve-year-old boys mother checking his e-mail and finding porn. While the website does say that any porn found on a members site will be destroyed and that the members profile will be deleted, they can only do this if that member is reported.
MySpace, www.MySpace.com, a website much like bebo, designed for communicating with people in various ways. Created by Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe. It is currently the worlds fourth most popular English-language website and the sixth most popular site in any language. It is the third most popular website in the U.S. The website employs 300 staff and is owned by News Corporation. Their headquarters are located in Santa Monica, California, U.S.A., with a back up server located in New York. 230,000 people register per day. The website contains blogs, photos, music, groups and other features. A number of celebrities and bands have also become members of the website. The website is useful as an advertising technique for businesses and artists to get their music around.
Orkut, an Internet Social-Network service run by google and named after its creator, Google employee, Orkut Buyyukkokten. Designed to help users meet new friends and maintain existing friendships. Similar to MySpace and Bebo. It allows the creation of easy to setup forums, called “communities” by users. Orkut used to be invitation only but recently changed and allows any user to create an account. www.orkut.com. It is most popular in Brazil with 61.57% of its users located there. Disadvantages of this site, there is reported to be a lot of racism and hate groups.
Facebook, for high school, college, university, corporate, non-profit, military and geographic communities primarily in English speaking countries. www.Facebook.com. As of December 2005, it had the largest no. of registered users among college-focused sites (at over 7.5 million U.S college student accounts created with an additional 20,000 new accounts being created daily). It is the no.1 site for photos, ahead of public sites such as Flickr, with 2.3 million photos uploaded daily and is the 7th most trafficked site in the U.S., according to ComScore’s Media Metrix. Based in Palo Alto, California. The name of the site is based on the paper facebooks that many colleges give to incoming students, faculty and staff, depicting members of the campus community.
Classmates, Randy Conrads who founded Classmates Online Inc created www.Classmates.com in 1995. It allows for members to find, connect and keep in touch with friends and acquaintances from throughout their lives, including kindergarten, primary school, high school, college, work and the U.S. military. The site has more than 40 million active members in the U.S. and Canada and an Alexa Internet traffic ranking of 499. It’s free to register as a Basic member, this entitles the members to list themselves to be found and search the entire database for friends. A member can post biographies, photos, and announcements and be informed of upcoming reunions. Gold members, who pay an annual fee, can also initiate sending e-mail to any member, use website tools for planning reunions and events and form private groups. Members receive e-mail from the site informing them of any new classmates added from their school/college etc.