foursquare

foursquare is a location-based social networking website based on software for mobile devices. This service is available to users with GPS-enabled mobile devices, such as smartphones. Users "check-in" at venues using a mobile website, text messaging or a device-specific application by running the application and selecting from a list of venues that the application locates nearby. Each check-in awards the user points and sometimes "badges".

The service was created in 2009 by Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai. Crowley had previously founded the similar project Dodgeball as his graduate thesis project in the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at New York University. Google bought Dodgeball in 2005 and shut it down in 2009, replacing it with Google Latitude. Dodgeball user interactions were based on SMS technology, rather than an application.

Foursquare is the second iteration of the same idea, that people can use mobile devices to interact with their environment. As of March 2011, the company reported it had 7 million registered users.

On September 1, 2010, the World Economic Forum announced the company as a Technology Pioneer for 2011.

Website: www.foursquare.com

Ibibo

Ibibo which stands for iBuild, iBond, is an Indian social networking site. It is an umbrella site that offers a variety of applications under its social network.

Ibibo was founded in January 2007 by Ashish Kashyap who had formerly served as the Head of Indian Sales and Operations for Google. Kahsyop currently serves as the company's CEO.

Ibibo is funded by the electronic media arm of South African company Naspers, MIH. China-based Tencent has expressed interest in a long term capital deal.

The company has recently tied up with Fashion TV for a photography competition.

Ibibo's iScream is a real-time product that allows ibibo users to broadcast their messages directly to all online ibibo users, via an SMS sent to 5676746 (India only), with MA as a prefix.

Ibibo's tool iFreshface lets aspiring models feature and promote their modelling portfolios within the social network.

Website: www.ibibo.com

hi5

hi5 is a social networking website based in San Francisco, California. The company was founded in 2003 by Ramu Yalamanchi. Bill Gossman was appointed CEO in April 2009, and Alex St. John joined as President and CTO in November 2009. In early 2010, hi5 acquired social gaming company, Big Six. The company raised $20 million in series A venture capital from Mohr Davidow Ventures, as well as $15 million in venture debt, in 2007, and announced it had raised $3 million convertible note from existing investor Mohr Davidow, bringing the funding up to $38 million. Quantcast reports Hi5 has 2.7 million monthly US visitors and 46.1 million global visitors.

Website: www.hi5.com

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking site. Founded in December 2002 and launched in May 2003, it is mainly used for professional networking. As of 22 March 2011, LinkedIn reports more than 100 million registered users, spanning more than 200 countries and territories worldwide. The site is available in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish. Quantcast reports Linkedin has 21.4 million monthly unique U.S. visitors and 47.6 million globally.

Website: www.linkedin.com

Orkut

Orkut is a social networking website that is owned and operated by Google Inc. The service is designed to help users meet new friends and maintain existing relationships. The website is named after its creator, Google employee Orkut Büyükkökten. Although Orkut is less popular in the United States than competitors Facebook and MySpace, it is one of the most visited websites in India and Brazil. As of April 2010, 48.0% of Orkut's users are from Brazil, followed by India with 39.2% and United States with 2.2%.

Originally hosted in California, in August 2008 Google announced that Orkut would be fully managed and operated in Brazil, by Google Brazil, in the city of Belo Horizonte. This was decided due to the large Brazilian user base and growth of legal issues.
As of March 2011, Alexa traffic ranked Orkut 102nd in the world; the website currently has more than 100 million active users worldwide. Anyone 18 years old or older can join Orkut.

Website: www.orkut.com

myYearbook

myYearbook is a social networking website, headquartered in New Hope, PA, United States. Members can make new friends by creating profiles, interacting through chatter, a real-time stream, sending virtual gifts, and playing games. Since its launch myYearbook has grown to be one of the top teen sites and one of the 25 most trafficked sites in the US. Quantcast reports MyYearbook has 4.7 million monthly unique US Visitors and 5.4 million globally It is estimated by Alexa that 77% of the website's visitors are from the US, where it has a traffic rank of 390.

Website: www.myyearbook.com

Myspace

Myspace, (stylized My_____ and previously MySpace) is a social networking website. Its headquarters are in Beverly Hills, California where it shares an office building with its immediate owner, News Corp. Digital Media, owned by News Corporation.

Myspace drives social interaction by providing a highly personalised experience around entertainment and connecting people to the music, celebrities, TV, movies, and games that they love. These entertainment experiences are available through multiple platforms, including online, mobile devices, and offline events. 

 

Myspace is also the home of Myspace Music, which offers an ever-growing catalogue of freely streamable audio and video content to users and provides major, independent, and unsigned artists alike with the tools to reach new audiences. The company is headquartered in Beverly Hills, CA and is a division of News Corporation.

Myspace became the most popular social networking site in the United States in June 2006, a position that it held throughout 2007 until 2008. In April 2008, according to comScore, Myspace was overtaken internationally by its main competitor, Facebook based on monthly unique visitors. Myspace employs 1,000 employees, after laying off 30% of its workforce in June 2009; the company does not disclose revenues or profits separately from News Corporation. Quantcast estimates MySpace's monthly U.S. unique visitors at 43.2 million.

Website: www.myspace.com

Twitter

Twitter is a social networking and microblogging website, based in San Francisco, California, also having servers and offices in San Antonio, Texas, Boston, Massachusetts, and Salt Lake City, Utah. Twitter, Inc. was originally incorporated in California, but has been incorporated in the jurisdiction of Delaware since 2007. Since being created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launching that July, the website has gained popularity worldwide and is estimated to have more than 200 million active users, generating 65 million tweets a day and handling over 800,000 search queries per day. It is sometimes described as the "SMS of the Internet".

Twitter enables users to send and read text-based posts composed of up to 140 characters, called tweets, which are displayed on the user's profile page. Users can subscribe to other users' tweets – this is known as following and subscribers are known as followers or tweeps ('Twitter' + 'peeps'). By default, tweets are publicly visible, though senders can restrict message delivery to just their followers. Users can tweet via the Twitter website, compatible external applications (such as for smartphones), or by Short Message Service (SMS) available in certain countries. While the service is free, accessing it through SMS may incur phone service provider fees.

Website: www.twitter.com

Facebook

Facebook (stylized facebook) is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. As of January 2011, Facebook has more than 600 million active users. Users may create a personal profile, add other users as friends, and exchange messages, including automatic notifications when they update their profile. Additionally, users may join common interest user groups, organized by workplace, school or college, or other characteristics. The name of the service stems from the colloquial name for the book given to students at the start of the academic year by university administrations in the United States to help students get to know each other better. Facebook allows anyone who declares themselves to be at least 13 years old to become a registered user of the website
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Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommates and fellow computer science students Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. The website's membership was initially limited by the founders to Harvard students, but was expanded to other colleges in the Boston area, the Ivy League, and Stanford University. It gradually added support for students at various other universities before opening to high school students, and, finally, to anyone aged 13 and over.

A January 2009 Compete.com study ranked Facebook as the most used social networking service by worldwide monthly active users, followed by MySpace. Entertainment Weekly included the site on its end-of-the-decade "best-of" list, saying, "How on earth did we stalk our exes, remember our co-workers' birthdays, bug our friends, and play a rousing game of Scrabulous before Facebook?" Quantcast estimates Facebook has 135.1 million monthly unique U.S. visitors in October 2010. According to Social Media Today, in April 2010 an estimated 41.6% of the U.S. population had a Facebook account.

Website: www.facebook.com