Facebook was founded in February 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, has became one of the most important online social network. It was originally created for the students of Harvard University, but because of the wide range of petitions coming from no-harvard students to join in, it slowly opened its doors for students of other universities.
By the year 2006, Facebook was used by students from USA, India, Germany and Israel. It was then when Facebook was opened to all the internet users with an e-mail account. Since then, the number of users has increased fascinatingly quick, reaching the 300 million active users.
I’m a big Facebook user. I joined in about a year ago. I use Facebook because it is very easy to use, very intuitive. Facebook helps me to keep in touch with my friends, family and people I don’t usually see. I also use it to play with its applications, games and tests.
Twitter.com
Twitter was founded in March 2006. Jack Dorsey (from San Francisco, Ca) had always thought about a platform that made he able to know what his friends were doing. When he brought the idea up to his colleagues, it was decided that a prototype should be built.
It was initally built by Obvious. Twitter is really simple and easy to use. The webpage asks you a question: “What's happening?", and users have to answer within 140 characters. Due to its fast popularity grow, it moved outside Obvious and Twitter Incorporated was founded in March 2007.
Despite Twitter is really simple, it’s very useful. Celebrities and personalities use it to “get closer” to its followers or self-promote themselves. It’s also a great tool to know what’s happening around the world, because almost all the news companies have a Twitter account, as CNN or BBC News.
MySpace.comMyspace is a social network founded in August 2003 by Tom Anderson. The site started to grow slowly, but it finally reached a number of users out of common, and it was considered a social revolution. The statistics say that MySpace.com had 200.623.371 users in September 2007, and a growing ratio of 230.000 users per day. MySpace is mostly used in the USA, although the number of users in Europe is growing.
By now, MySpace is owned by News Corporation, and employs more than 300 people. The site is very popular because it is a great tool for the musicians to advertise their music. In fact, almost all the musicians have a MySpace profile.
I use MySpace.com to discover new bands and groups. When I read an article in a magazine about a band, I search it in MySpace and I listen to their music. It is a very useful tool for the music lovers.
Blogger.com
Blogger.com is a site where you can create your personal blogs, and was founded in August 1999 by Pyra Labs. Google bought the company in 2003. The service allows you to publish your blog without having to download or install any server or scripting programs.
When Google bought the company, Blogger.com started to improve in many aspects. Since then, the user is able to upload via email, post photos and videos and use your own CSS template.
The possibilities that offers Blogger.com are awesome. You can use a blog to talk about whatever you want, and let people give their opinions. I use Blogger to post photos and video I like, and explaining a bit of my life.
TAGGED.com
Tagged.com is a social network site founded in October 2004 by Greg Tseng and Johann Schleier-Smith. The site says to be 3rd biggest social network page from the USA. They have about 80 million registered members, and 16 million members active monthly.
In June 2001 was published an article called “The World’s most annoying webpage” in TIME Magazine. The author of the article, Sean Gregory, asured that Tagged.com was using its user’s contact list to send spam and earn more users. In July 2009, the site was sued by Andrew Cuomo, who is the New York State Attorney General. Tagged.com agreed to pay 500.000$ and modify its promotional practices.
I used to visit Tagged.com, but I cancelled my account after reciving a lot of spam emails.
Tuenti.com
Tuenti was created in 2006 by Zaryn Dentzel, a student from the United States of America who was living in Madrid, Spain. At first, the site was only avaliable for a few college students. Now Tuenti.com is avaliable for anyone who recives an invitation from another user of the site, who has previously recieved an invitation. Each user of Tuenti has 10 invitations.
Tuenti is a Spanish site, and since Deembre 3th of 2009 it is avaliable in all the official languages of the country, incluiding Catalan, Euskera and Gallego. The site is avaliable in English, also.
The design and the operation are very similar to the Facebook.com ones. The user has a profile and his friends can write things in his wall. The user can also upload photos, videos and blogs.
I have an account in Tuenti.com, but I don’t like it much. Using Tuenti is a bit more difficult than Facebook, and I have more friends joined in Facebook than signed in Tuenti, so I hardly ever visit Tuenti.com.
Flickr.com
Flickr.com is a photo-sharing website that also works as a social network. It was devoloped by Ludicorp, a Vancouver-based company, and was launched in February 2004. In March 2005, Ludicorp and its sites were bought by Yahoo. Since January 2007, the users have to own a Yahoo.com account in order to use the service.
The use of Flickr is easy. The user uploads photos and other users can watch it and comment it. The user also have his friends, who are allowed to see private photos and get noticed when the user uploads new photos.
I like photography and in Flickr there are really good photographers, so I use Flickr to watch photos. Somentimes I sometimes upload my own photographs, also.
LinkedIn.com
LinkedIn.com is a business-orientated social network, launched in May 5th 2003 by Reid Hoffman. The site provides the user with a personal profile, that shows the user’s professional experience, education and recommandations. Then, the user adds trusted contacts, who are connected to other contacts, creating a very big social network of professionals.
Using LinkedIn.com, you can contact professionals when you need them, or you can be contacted by someone who is needing your services and find professional offers.
The website has more than 50 million registered users from 200 countries and territories worldwide.
YouTube.com
YouTube.com is a video-sharing website, founded by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim in February 2005. The site was bought by Google Inc. In November 2006, and now YouTube is operated as a subsidiary of Google.
Everybody can watch videos in Youtube, but only registered users are allowed to upload videos up to 10 minutes in lenght and 2 gigabytes. Registered have also a channel page, with their profile, their videos and their visits book. This users are allowed to comment and rate videos, and subscribe themselves to other’s channels, in order to get noticed when they upload new videos.
There is a lot of controversy around Youtube, because some companies like Viacom, owner of tv channels like MTV and Nickelodeon, sued Youtube.com because more than 160,000 unauthorised clips of its programmes had been loaded onto YouTube's site and viewed more than 1.5 billion times. After some discussions, YouTube has created a new website with te collaboration of some recording houses like Sony BMG, called Vevo, where users will find all the videos related to artists.
Youtube has been blocked by the authorities in about 24 countries like China, Turkey, Morocco or Thailand, because there were inadequate.
Lookbook.nu
Lookbook.nu is an invitation-only fashion social network, created by Yuri Lee in San Francisco in 2008. Is a site where young fashion lovers from all around the world upload photographies from their looks and comment other’s looks. There is also a forum, where users discuss about cultural stuff.
The community has grown fast, reaching the 50.000 users and over one million hits per month.
