The four most popular social networking sites

Facebook

“Facebook is a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them. People use Facebook to keep up with friends, upload an unlimited number of photos, share links and videos, and learn more about the people they meet.” The verbatim definition as per the Facebook.com website.

As of July 2007, the website had the largest number of registered users among college-focused sites with over 34 million active members worldwide (also from non-collegiate networks) In July it was ranked between top 10–13 web sites, and was the number one site for photos in the US, ahead of public sites such as Flickr, with over 8.5 million photos uploaded daily. It is also the seventh most-visited site in the US. The site is free to users and generates revenue from advertising including banner ads and sponsored groups (in April 2006, revenue was rumoured to be over US$1.5 million per week).

Users create profiles that often contain photos and lists of personal interests, exchange private or public messages, and join groups of friends. The viewing of detailed profile data is restricted to users from the same network or confirmed friends.

Even Walmart & Target, (the world's biggest retailer, and the US's trendiest mass department store chain), are both getting in on the act.

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Myspace

The MySpace service was founded in August 2003. MySpace is a popular social networking website offering an interactive, user-submitted network of friends, personal profiles, blogs, groups, photos, music and videos internationally. It is headquartered in California, US, where it shares an office building with its immediate owner, Fox Interactive Media, in turn the owner of Fox Interactive and therefore MySpace.

According to Alex Internet, MySpace is currently the world's sixth most popular English-language website and the sixth most popular website in any language, and the third most popular website in the US, though it has topped the chart on various weeks.

The service has gradually gained more popularity than similar websites to achieve nearly 80% of visits to online social networking websites. It has become an increasingly influential part of contemporary popular culture, especially in English speaking countries

YouTube

YouTube is a video-sharing website where users can upload, view and share video clips.

This social-networking website was created in mid February 2005. The company used Adobe Flash technology to display a wide variety of video content, including movie clips, TV clips and music videos, as well as amateur content such as videoblogging and short original videos. In October 2006, Google announced that it had reached a deal to acquire the company for US $1.65 billion in Google stock.

Unregistered users can watch most videos on the site, while registered users are permitted to upload an unlimited number of videos. Related videos, determined by title and tags, appear onscreen to the right of a given video. In YouTube's second year, functions were added to enhance user ability to post video 'responses' and subscribe to content feeds.

Before being purchased by Google, YouTube declared that its business model was advertisement-based, making 15 million dollars per month. Some industry commentators have speculated that YouTube's running costs — specifically the bandwidth required may be as high as 5 to 6 million USD per month, thereby fueling criticisms that the company, like many Internet startups, did not have a viably implemented business model.

Advertisements were launched on the site beginning in March 2006.

Second Life

Second Life is an Internet-based virtual world launched in 2003, developed by Linden Research, which came to international attention via mainstream news media in late 2006 and early 2007. A downloadable client program called the Second Life Viewer enables its users, called "Residents", to interact with each other through motional avatars, providing an advanced level of a social network service combined with general aspects of a metaverse.

Residents can explore, meet other Residents, socialise, participate in individual and group activities, create and trade items (virtual property) and services from one another.

Second Life is one of several virtual worlds that have been inspired by the cyberpunk literary movement, and particularly by Neal Stephenson's novel Snow Crash.

The stated goal of Linden Lab is to create a world like the Metaverse described by Stephenson, a user-defined world of general use in which people can interact, play, do business, and otherwise communicate.

Second Life's virtual currency is the Linden Dollar (Linden, or L$) and is exchangeable for US dollars in a marketplace consisting of residents, Linden Lab and real life companies. While Second Life is sometimes referred to as a game, this description is disputed. It does not have points, scores, winners or losers, levels, an end-strategy, or most of the other characteristics of games, though it can be thought of as a game on a more basic level. It is a semi-structured virtual environment where characters undertake activities for the purpose of personal enjoyment.

In all, more than 8.9 million accounts have been registered, although many are inactive, some residents have multiple accounts, and there are no reliable figures for actual long term consistent usage. Despite its prominence, Second Life has notable competitors, including There, Active Worlds, and the more "mature" themed Red Light Center.