A matchmaking, or dating, website is an online forum that people may join in hopes of meeting compatible potential mates. People who con- nect online before meeting in the real world have the chance to base their relationship on personality, intelligence, and sense of humor rather than on purely physical attributes. Five of the biggest and best-known sites are Ameri- canSingles, eHarmony, Match.com, True, and Yahoo! Personals. Facebook, the social-networking site, also offers the dating site called Are You Interested.52 Most dating sites charge a fee, but PlentyofFish, OKCupid, MatchDoctor, and BookofMatches are free. Most of the 1,000 or so dating sites are niche or spe- cialty sites for those with different political or religious beliefs, different eth- nicities, mature adults, and so on.53
Web 2.0 & the Social Web: Social Networking, Media Sharing, Social-Network Aggregation, & Microblogging What is Web 2.0, and which social-networking, media-sharing, social-network aggregator websites, and microblogging might be useful?
Finally, we come to what is known as Web 2.0, which can be defined as the move toward a more social, collaborative, interactive, and responsive web.54 As websites have become easier to use, they allow users to better har- ness the collective power of people, which has led to a “social web” or “social media,” involving not only blogs and wikis (for sharing information) but also social networks and media sharing. The common theme of all these is human interaction.
panel 2.39
eBay auction
info!
moreinfo!
moreThe Internet & the World Wide Web
99 MYSPACE, FACEBOOK, & OTHER SOCIAL-NETWORKING WEBSITES A social-
networking website is an online community that allows members to keep track of their friends and share photos, videos, music, stories, and ideas with other registered members. Social-networking websites are led by MySpace (76 million U.S. members) and Facebook (55 million U.S. members) but also include the business-contact site LinkedIn (6.3 million U.S. members).55 Although 44% of U.S. adults who were online in 2007 did not participate in social networks, according to Forrester Research, another 25% were considered “joiners,” who vis- ited social-networking sites such as MySpace; “collectors” consisted of an elite 15% who collected and aggregated information; and the rest were “critics,” who posted ratings and reviews, as well as contributed to blogs and forums.56
YOUTUBE, FLICKR, & OTHER MEDIA-SHARING WEBSITES A media-sharing website is a type of online social network in which members share media such as photos, videos, and music. The most popular example is YouTube, but others are Hulu, Flickr, Shutterfly, Twango, and Yahoo! Video. Forty-eight percent of internet users in 2007 said they had visited video-sharing websites, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, and the daily traffic to such sites doubled in a year.57 Video-sharing sites include YouTube, Flickr, Photobucket, Imageshack, Vimeo, and Veoh. (Incidentally, part of the success of YouTube, where people watch around 3 billion videos a month, is that its founders have kept it pornography-free, using top-secret pattern-recognition software, according to one report.)58
Some Top Social- Networking Websites
Bebo
BlackPlanet.com Facebook Flixter Friendster Last.fm LinkedIn MySpace Ning Xanga
Some Top Media- Sharing Websites
Flickr Hulu Photobucket Imageshack Shutterfly Twango Yahoo! Video YouTube
info!
more100
Chapter 2
FRIENDFEED, SPOKEO, & OTHER SOCIAL-NETWORK AGGREGATORS Cathy Brooks, 39, of San Francisco is described as a “typically unapologetic Sili- con Valley web addict.” In one week alone, it’s reported, “she produced more than 40 pithy updates on the text messaging service Twitter, uploaded two dozen videos to various video-sharing sites, posted seven graphs on . . . Flickr and one item to the online community calendar Upcoming.”59 She and her friends follow one another’s activities by funneling them into a single infor- mation broadcast, a content-aggregation system known as FriendFeed.
Social-network aggregators, or social aggregators, collect content from all of a user’s various social networks profiles into one place, then allow them to track friends and share their other social network activities.
Beside FriendFeed, other examples of “friend-tracking services” are Spokeo, Iminta, Plaxo, Readr, and Mugshot.
TWITTER & TUMBLR SOCIAL NETWORKING & MICROBLOGGING SERVICES As you and your friends track each other’s every moment, you can also use services such as Twitter and Tumblr to do “thoughtcasting” or “microblogging”—send a text message from your mobile phone, which your friends will receive on the web/IM or on their phones.60 (The phenomenon is called microblogging, because messages have to be short, 140 characters or less, owing to length restrictions on text messaging.) Tumblr lets you express yourself using mul- tiple media, but in a way that’s easier than using traditional blog software.
Some Social-Network Aggregators
FriendFeed Spokeo Iminta Plaxo Readr Mugshot
The Internet & the World Wide Web 101 Email is still king at the office, but research suggests that Twitter, Facebook,
and other social media have overtaken email to become the fourth-most- popular way people spend time online (after search, portals, and software applications).61
102
Chapter 2