Social Networking Sites

Your small-business social marketing may include your intelligent involvement with social networking sites.

Take the time to find out if any of these sites are exactly right for marketing your small business. There is a growing selection of social networking sites including:

• AsianAve — social networking community for Asian Americans founded in June 1997; partner sites are BlackPlanet, Faithbase, and MiGente.
• Batanga — the first and largest online community focused on Latino lifestyle, entertainment, and Latin music; with more than 5.5 million unique visitors each month, it is one of the top 100 fastest-growing websites; has 28 streaming radio stations, “MyBatanga” webpages for networking, and Latin music blogs; founded in 1999.
• Bebo — (“Blog early blog often”) a worldwide, multilingual, UK-based social networking service founded in 2005; 3rd largest social networking service in the U.S.; includes Bebo Authors, Bebo Music, Bebo Groups, and Bebo Mobile; in March 2008 Time Warner AOL announced its intention to purchase Bebo for $850 million.
• Best of the Web — established in 1994 to create a community of people to nominate and vote for best-of-class websites in various categories.
• BlackPlanet — the largest social networking community for African Americans, with the 5th highest traffic of all social networking sites; founded in 1999; partner sites are AsianAve, Faithbase, and MiGente.
• Broadcaster — video entertainment and social video network where users communicate with each other using webcams; launched in 2006.
• Classmates — enables users to locate and interact with acquaintances from kindergarten, elementary school, high school, college, work, and the military; #3 in unique monthly visitors among social networking sites; established in 1995.
• Craigslist — network of local communities for more than 500 cities in more than 50 countries worldwide, community-moderated and largely free; local classified ads and forums; founded by Craig Newmark in 1995.
• Eons — online community for baby boomers.
• Facebook — social networking community — originally for college and then high school students — that allows users to join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and region; founded by Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg in February 2004; 2nd largest social networking service in the U.S.; in October 2007 Microsoft bought a 1.6% share of Facebook for $246 million.
• Faithbase — online community for American Christians; launched in June 2007; partner sites are AsianAve, BlackPlanet, and MiGente.
• Friendster — privately owned online social network now primarily popular in Asia; founded by Jonathan Abrams in Mountain View, California, in March 2002.
• Gather — social networking service designed to encourage cultural, political, and social interaction among users, who can create discussion groups and publish articles and comments; founded in 2005 by Thomas Gerace; investors and partners include American Public Media, Hearst Publications, and McGraw-Hill.
• Glee — "Gay, lesbian, and everyone else"; gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender social networking community launched in February 2007.
• Growing Bolder — "It's about attitude"; social networking community created for people who are 50 and older, but open to all; launched in April 2006 by Marc Middleton, host of a radio program with the same name.
• Habbo — virtual Hotel (chat room) where teenagers (“Habbos”) socialize with each other publicly and privately using personalized avatars; launched in Finland in 2000, it has now expanded to more than thirty countries.
• hi5 — "Your friends, your world"; international social networking service; a top-20 website globally and the #1 social network in 26 countries in Latin America, Europe, Asia and Africa; founded by Ramu Yalamanchi, launched in 2003.
• Linkedin — "Relationships matter"; business-oriented social network of more than 20 million professionals from around the world, representing 150 industries; launched in May 2003.
• MiGente — English-language online community for Latina/o Americans launched in 2000; partner sites are AsianAve, BlackPlanet, and Faithbase.
• Monster — career and employment website with the world’s largest job database and a powerful search feature; one of the 20 most-visited websites in the world; established in January 1999.
• MySpace — "A place for friends"; social networking service that allows users to create personal profiles, blogs, and groups, and upload photos, music and videos; the largest social networking community in the U.S.; bought by News Corp’s Fox Interactive Media for $580 million in July 2005; the 100 millionth account was created in August 2006.
• Orkut — online social community managed by Google, created for American audiences but mostly popular in Brazil (where it is the most visited website of any kind) and India (where it is the 2nd most visited website); created by Google employee Orkut Büyükkökten.
• Squidoo — "Everyone's an expert on something"; information-sharing network of user-generated “lenses,” which are one-page websites that express the point of view of the user. (“lensmaster”) on a particular subject; founded in 2006 by Seth Godin.
• Usenet — Internet discussion system that is distributed world-wide; conceived by graduate students at Duke University and the University of North Carolina in 1979. Unlike a bulletin board system or Web forum, there is no central server or owner; the largest decentralized information network ever.
• Xanga — "The Weblog community"; international service that offers “Xanga sites” (mini-websites) that include a blog, a photoblog, a videoblog, an audioblog, a "Pulse" (mini-blog), messaging, and a social networking profile; popular around the world, particularly with teenagers; founded in 1999, it has about 40 million users.
• Yahoo 360° — social networking, blogging, and photo-sharing service launched in 2005.

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