Beyond Myspace

Other Social Networking Sites

Myspace is the 800-pound gorilla in the social networking arena. According to some estimates, the site attracts about 200,000 new members every day, and accounts for 80% of all social networking site traffic. Myspace attracts a diverse population of members from all age groups, non-profit organizations and commercial businesses. The popularity of this site is due to the array of interactive media and features that it hosts including an internal email system, an search engine, member blogs, personal profiles, message boards, videos, photographs and music files. But as mentioned earlier, rapid growth seems to have caused an erosion of quality and accessibility at Myspace. Here are some of the other top sites in social networking...

Classmates.com, online since 1995, is credited as being the first official social networking site. Social networking sites quickly became a part of popular culture and within a couple of years this social trend really exploded. At the end of 2006 Classmates had about 40 million members. This site helps people reunite with their classmates from their kindergarten class all the way through college. Members can post their profiles, associate themselves with their primary school, high school and/or college, look up old friends, and find new friends. A lot of class reunion committees use this site to find contact information when planning a reunion event. This site offers both free networking services and premium networking services. Free services include posting profiles and photos and conducting searches. If you want to email friends that you find on this site, then you will need to upgrade your membership to a Gold status and pay the fee.

Facebook is a social networking site that was designed for college students, professors and university staff members. Today, however, it attracts members from high schools and businesses as well. What makes this site special is that it is the number one site for image exchange. It even out-performs Flickr. Currently this site is receiving about 2.3 million photo uploads each day.

LinkedIn is a social networking site that has a business audience focus. At the beginning of January 2007 this site had 9 million professional users. This site is great for developing professional networks and relationships. Here professionals can exchange ideas, develop profitable relationships, develop lists of professional contacts, locate jobs or employees, and research market trends.

LiveJournal is a social networking site that specializes in both written and audio blogs. This site attracts a mostly female demographic between the ages of 15 and 24. What makes this social networking site different from other sites is that it offers its members several syndication services that can be customized to the user's preferences. For example the basic template for members can be customized to include various visual elements like avatars and user photos. The call in audio blog is another unique service offered on this site. To post an audio message to their site members call in to the LiveJournal system and record their message. This message is then posted to their site.

StumbleUpon is a different type of networking than MySpace. This site utilizes toolbar networking that allows members to "channel surf" the web by directing their site searches according to personal interests. This works a lot like a human-edited search engine for member sites and blogs. Member sites and blogs are rated, reviewed and recommended by other members. By doing this StumbleUpon creates virtual communities that help members with similar interests connect with each other.

Xanga is another very popular SN site. It has about 40 million users. This site started out as a way for people to share music and book reviews. Today it is the home to social networking profiles, photoblogs, weblogs and audioblogs. This site attracts mostly teenagers, and it is a great way for teenagers to develop blogrings and to establish contact with other members in their geographical area.

Got comments about your favorite social networking site? Post your thoughts below...