In today’s generation, the social networking sites are seen to emerge by the minute. Social networking can be defined as grouping of many individuals or even organizations into different specific kinds of groups, like some small rural communities or even a neighborhood subdivision. Even though it is noted that social networking may be possible in person, especially within a workplace or universities or even high schools, it was noted to be most popular online. The reason behind this was that, unlike the high schools, colleges or even workplaces, it was seen that the internet was filled with around millions of individuals who are seeking to meet people. This is to gather and also share information and even experiences regarding any topic.
So coming to online social networking, it was seen that websites are the most common means. It is through this that these websites are popularly known as the ‘social sites’. These social networking websites were found to function like an online community of different number of internet users.
The top 20 upcoming social networking sites include the following.
Badoo
URL: www.badoo.com
Badoo is found to be a multi-lingual social networking site. Though it is quite often referred to as being British based, it is actually owned by a company in Cyprus. It was seen that in a Cambridge University report, this popular site was rated the lowest score in terms of privacy among the other 45 social networking sites that were also examined.
This site was launched at around May 2006. Currently the site claims to possess around 46 million registered users. It also claims to be one among the top 200 most visited sites over the internet, according to the ratings from the Alexa Internet. It was noted that unlike the other social networking sites, this site was found not to incorporate any form of advertising in its site. The user’s profile was thus, noted to contain only the user generated content.
Bebo
URL:www.bebo.com
Bebo is actually an acronym for ‘Blog early, blog often’. This is an upcoming social networking website which was founded in January 2005. It was seen to be allowed to use in many countries which included Ireland, Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States, New Zealand and Australia. A more Polish version was see to have been launched recently, which was found to use a different user database.
It was noted that Bebo was similar to the other social networking sites seen. This site enabled each profile to include two specific modules. This included a comment section, where it was seen the other users could leave a message, and also a personalized list of friends. The users also have the option to select from many more modules in order to add. It was seen that by default, the profile is private when an account is created. This was seen to limit access to the friends that were specifically added.
Hyves-216
URL: www.Hyves.nl
Hyves is seen to be a free social networking site which is also Dutch. This was seen to have been online since October 2004. The name Hyves came from the English language Beehive, comparing the different users to bees inside a hyve. It was seen that since the domain hives.nl had already been registered, they had to choose to call their website by the name, Hyves.
The main focus of this upcoming website was in keeping touch with all the existing friends of a particular user along with the ability to make new friends. It was seen that there was no requisite to have knowledge of HTML in order to create a Hyve. The users have an option to create their very own personalized pages along with rich media content, like photos or videos or even flash content and custom layouts. By around July 2008 Hyves had announced the fact that they had reached over 7 million users. Out of this about 5 million were have found to have been Dutch. In the year of 2007, this website was voted the ‘most popular website of the year’ in the Website of the year competition.
Sonico.com
URL: www.sonico.com
Sonico.com is a social networking website that was seen to be oriented toward a Latin American audience. It was also having free access. The different users can search and also add friends or update their personal profile and so on.
This site, Sonico.com was noted to have been launched in July 2007. It was launched stressing the importance and need of having legitimate users rather than having a massive amount of unwanted anonymous accounts.
Their motto is-real people, real connections. It was seen that unlike the other social networks, Sonico.com has a proactive moderation which consist of a team which is solely dedicated in order to check out each and every new profile and also content that is uploaded into the site.
It was proudly noted that one year after its foundation, Sonico.com was found to have around 88 people staff and they also claim to be including around 110 new users on every single day. This site reports to include more than 20 million of registered users. It was rated to rank at 392 in the Alexa ranking.
Opentaks
URL: www.opentaks.com
Social Networking, also referred to as social media, is one of the most important online marketing developments in the recent years that has given chance to people all over the world to connect, interact and share information from wherever they are. It encompasses an online platform and set of tools that focuses on building social networks or social relations among people who share similar or varied business interests.Every day, there are millions of users who join these social networking websites to develop new contacts, relationships and digital reputations, and get an amazing response in return. Not just that but for businesses looking to diversify their online marketing strategies and set up a global brand, social networking websites are no less than a boon.
No matter what industry you are in, you can use websites such as Facebook, Twitter and Google plus to set up an online presence of your business and develop a good marketing mix.Among the explosion of social networking websites, the next biggest thing that can serve you as your ticket of success in business marketing is ‘Opentaks’. Opentaks is a newly launched internet tool that can help you connect with your current and new customers and business associates.And the best thing about this social networking website is- It is free and easy to use. Yes, you heard me FREE. You can share information about your business and products absolutely free of cost here. It also provides you the option to display ads of your brand and products without having to pay even a single penny.Indubitably, any company wishing to wisely invest time and advertising should use “Opentaks”- It’s lot more than just social networking!
Fotolog
URL: www.fotolog.com
This upcoming social networking site was seen to have been launched in May 2002. The Fotolog was seen to generate about 3 billion page views and also found to have received about over 20 million unique visitors in each month. Very recently, this site Fotolog.com was found to have entered the list ‘the top 20 sites’ in the global site rankings by Alexa.
This site was seen to have had a frequent trail of technical problems, but this was due to the very fast and rapid growth rate of this site. It was seen that the recent upgrades made to the site made it much more faster. By November 2005, Fotolog was officially generating about 750 million page views in one month.
Flickr
URL: www.Flickr.com
Flickr is a social networking site that was also noted to be an image and video hosting website. It was also seen to be a web services suite and an online community as well. Additionally, other than being a popular website for different users in order to share and also embed their personal photographs, this service was noted to be widely used by the bloggers in order to host the images that they embed in their blogs and also in social media. By October 2009[update], the site claimed to host about over 4 billion images
The early versions of Flickr were seen to be focused on a multiuser chat room which was called ‘FlickrLive’. This came with real-time photo exchange abilities. It is noted that the key features of this site that were in fact, not initially present, were tags and also marking of the photos as favorites or even group photo pools.
Ning
URL: www.ning.com
Ning is seen to be an online platform for different people in order to create their very own social network. It was launched in October 2005. Ning was seen to have been Andreessen’s third company. The term ‘Ning’ is Chinese for peace.
Ning had started its development by October 2004 and it had launched its platform publicly at around October 2005. Ning was seen to have been initially funded. Ning was seen to compete with other social sites like Facebook and MySpace. They appeal to the people who wish to create their very own social networks at around some specific interests along with their very own visual design and choice of features and also member data.
The very unique feature seen in Ning is that absolutely anyone can create their very own social network based on their particular topic or in fact, need. Thus, they are able to cater to the specific membership bases.
Tumblr
URL: www.tumblr.com
Tumblr is actually a blogging platform that permits the users to post their text or images or video into their tumblelog, which is a short-form of a blog. The users are now able to follow the other users and also see their posts all together place up on their dashboard. The users can also like or even reblog the other blogs seen on the site. This service was seen to emphasize on the customizability and also the ease of use.
The Tumblr was seen to emphasize on its customizability and also its ease of use, along with a simple sign-up process. It features a ‘like’ button, which permits one user to tell another whether or not they liked his content and the ‘reblog’ button, permits easy reposts of the content from one tumblelog upon another. This provides positive feedback which has given the Tumblr about an 85% of retention rate when compared with the 40% seen to be given to Twitter.
Buzznet
URL: www.Buzznet.com
Buzznet.com is seen to be a journal, photo and also a video-sharing kind of social media network. It was noticed that like the other social networking sites, this Buzznet was a place for its members to share the content based on their own personal interests. However unlike the other classic social networks, which were seen to focus primarily on the messaging and also the profile pages, Buzznet allows its members to participate in the communities which are created around events, ideas and also interests.
Ibibo
URL: www.ibibo.com
Ibibo was seen to stand for iBuild, iBond. It is an Indian social networking site. It was noted to be an umbrella site which offers a number of different applications under its single social network.
Ibibo’s iScream was noted to be its real-time product which permitted the ibibo users to broadcast their own messages directly to all the other online ibibo users through an SMS texted to the number 5676746 (in India only), along with the text MA as its prefix.
Ibibo’s tool, iFreshface was seen to permit aspiring models to feature and also promote their different modelling portfolios inside the social network.
Classmates.com
URL: www.classmates.com
Classmates.com is noted to be an upcoming social network service. This was originally created in 1995. This social media website was seen to help the different members find, connect and also keep in touch with their friends and also their acquaintances. It was seen that Classmates.com was found to have more than around 40 million active members in Canada and the United States. It was ranked by Nielsen Online at number three in the unique monthly visitors among the different social networking sites.
Faceparty
URL: www.faceparty.com
Faceparty is a leading UK-based social networking site which allows the users to create their online profiles and also interact along with each other by using the forums and also the messaging facilities which were seen to be similar to email.
Around March 2008, Faceparty was seen to have been reclaimed by the Bamforth and the Anarchy Towers. This happened by having lost the control of the organisation by 2005 to the CIS Internet Ltd.
It was announced that all the advertising would be removed within a bid in order to become less corporate and also to ensure that the staff levels would then fall from about 18 to 4.
Flixster
URL: www.flixster.com
Flixster is an upcoming social movie site which allows its users to share the movie ratings and also discover new movies. It also helps the users to meet others who may have similar movie taste.
It was proudly noted that between November 2006 and January 2007, this site recorded the number of daily page views rose from 20 million a day to around 50 million a day, according to the Alexa Toolbar. Alexa was found to have no longer provided the numbers of the daily page views, but they provide the number of page views in terms of a percentage.
Quantcast.com reports indicated that the number of global daily page views seen for Flixster.com had peaked to 8,331,961 in January 2008 and then dropped to 1,325,685 by July 2008.
Haboo
URL: www.habbo.com
Habbo is an upcoming social networking site which is originally aimed at teenagers. This website was seen to be owned and also operated by the Sulake Corporation. This service was found to have begun in 2000 and was seen to have expanded to about 32 other online communities.
As of June 2008 about 118 million avatars were seen to have been registered. It was noted that there are about 8 million unique visitors every month and about 75000 avatars being created on a daily basis. During the years that have passed, Habbo is seen to have changed their web design and also their appearance. The latest change incorporated was noted to have occurred in July 2009.
MyLife
URL: www.mylife.com
MyLife was formerly known as Reunion.com. This is a social network service which was founded in 2002. This company had begun with the acquisition of the highschoolalumni.com and also the PlanetAlumni.com. This website was seen to claim to help the members in order to find and also keep in touch with their friends and relatives.
Reunion.com had claimed to be the 6th top social networking site in August 2007 in their own press release along with 28 million members. It was seen to grow by nearly 1 million new members in every month, mostly in Canada and the United States.
MyHeritage
URL: www.myheritage.com
MyHeritage is an upcoming social networking site which was noted to be highly popular because it is a family-oriented social network service. It also happens to be a genealogy website. This permits its members to create their very own family websites and also share their pictures and videos. It enables them to organize their family events and also create their family trees with provisions to search for ancestors. With over 30 million users, MyHeritage is definitely one among the largest and most popular sites in the social networking and also the genealogy field.
MyHeritage was founded in 2003. Within around six years, this company had grown to over a community of around 30 million members along with another 320 million online profiles. It is noted that there are 6 million family trees seen on the site and that the site is also accessible in 34 different languages. All this was seen to make MyHeritage the second largest genealogy company seen in the world.
MyAnimeList
URL: www.myanimelist.net
MyAnimeList is often abbreviated as MAL. This is an upcoming social networking website. This site provides its users along with a list like system which enables it to organize the anime and the manga. It was seen to facilitate finding the different users who would share the similar tastes and also provide a very large database on the anime and manga.
As of July 2009, MyAnimeList was seen to claim that they include around 200,000 registered users, of whom they said that over 13,000 sign in each and every day.
According to founder, the site had been launched in November 2004 and it was originally hosted on his own personal website, before it had been moved under the domain myanimelist.net, in April 2006, to make an attempt in order to increase their user base. He further said that, ever since then, this site had a huge influx of more and more new users.
MyYearbook
URL: www.myyearbook.com
MyYearbook is a free and upcoming Internet social network service which is similar to the other social networking sites.
This site has a user base which is seen to be over 90% American. It includes 75% of its new memberships to come from the United States and around 25% from the other countries.
This site has added a large number of features which are commonly found on the other social networking sites as well, but here but it is used under different names. The Quizzes and also the Pimp sections seen in the site were found to contain a wide collection of graphics and also different user generated material which can also be used on the other social networking sites.
There were also many other featured pages seen for entertainment. It is noted that a user does not need to be a member in order to do most things seen on the site. But still they can do more using a MyYearbook account.
Last.fm
URL: www.last.fm
Last.fm is noted to be a UK-based music community and Internet Radio website. This site was founded in 2002. This site claims to have over a 30 million of active users who are based in more than 200 other countries.
By using a music recommender system called the Audioscrobbler, this site, Last.fm was seen to build a detailed profile of each and every user according to their musical taste by recording the details of all the songs that the user ever listens to. This is done either on the streamed radio stations or else on the user’s computer or by other portable music devices.
This information is then transferred to the Last.fm’s database by menas of a plugin which is installed into the music player of the user. Then the profile data is displayed on the profile page of the user. The site also offers a numerous set of social networking features and it can also recommend and even play the artists who are similar to the user’s favorites.
