Check Out Social Networking Sites

Facebook, Myspace, Friendster, Hi5, Sconex (R.I.P.), and twitter: all of these are well-known social networking websites. Friendster was the mother of social networking websites.
Founded in 2002, Friendster allowed for members to contact each other, comment on user profiles, private messaging, give details about events and host photos.

In its heyday, Myspace (founded in 2003) was one of the best known social networking websites, allowing people to post pictures, comment on user profiles, private messaging, it even has a blog configured into it and of course it serves as a means for small music artists to be heard.

Hi5, founded in 2003, was popular for those interested in social networking sites outside of the U.S.. It allows users to post photos, comment on user profiles, private messaging and event invitations.

Sconex (no longer in service), could best be described as the Myspace for high school students. It allowed for users to comment on other users profiles, private message, as well as, host photos.

Facebook (founded in 2004), now in its heyday, is the most popular social networking website. It is MySpace's main competitor and allows its users to post photos, comment on user profiles, private messaging and event invitations, give "status updates" (a sort of microblog, allowing users to post what they or doing), create groups, and it even provides thousands of applets (games, e-trade applications and even online dating applications) for use by its members.

Twitter, founded in 2006, allows for users to "follow" other users. By "following" another user, you are notified every time they change their "what's happening" (comparable to Facebook's "status update").

Each of these social networking websites seem to take the best/most popular features from one another and modify it just enough to make it unique to their own site. Personally, I believe Facebook is the best social networking website out there (at least for now). People from all over the globe are joining Facebook, it has more features than I know what to do with and their interface is user-friendly. Myspace is slowly loosing popularity, because of this they are trying to incorporate a lot of the same features that first appeared on Facebook (a bit too late though). As for Twitter, it is increasingly more and more popular, but I just don't care enough about what's happening in strangers lives to be an active "tweeter" reader (which is all Twitter has to offer really). As for Friendster, that was before my time, in terms of the online social networking bandwagon. I had only heard about Friendster after signing up for Myspace and Myspace was far better than any other social networking website at that time. Like Friendster, Hi5 did not appeal to me much, because I was already setup with a Myspace account and there wasn't anything too appealing about it. I should also note, that I had a Sconex account as well. I mainly used Sconex to communicate with people from my high school and it wasn’t until Facebook became very popular* (around 2005-6), did I leave both Myspace and Sconex.

*Popular: a lot of people were on it and it offered features unavailable on other social networking websites.