Social Network Sites are websites where you share information with others. Some have more features than others.

What follows is a brief outline of the websites Bebo, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and YouTube.

BEBO

Bebo is an online social media network similar in format to MySpace, Xanga, Facebook, and Yahoo. Bebo is the next generation social networking site where members can stay in touch with their College friends, connect with friends, share photos, discover new interests and just hang out. Bebo has tons of users, an open developers platform, support for Facebook apps, and users that are apparently fairly responsive to the new apps.

Company

Bebo CEO Michael Birch said his company is concurrently working with Google’s OpenSocial interoperability initiative, but wanted to get its own platform out the door before that alliance is ready.

Members

Bebo members can choose to add programmes to a list of "favourites", automatically receiving text message or email alerts to inform them when new content has been posted on their favourite channels. Bebo has a membership of more than 40 million world-wide and ranks as the world's most engaging Social Media Network with users spending an average of 40 minutes per usage day on the site*.

Bebo is a not just another MySpace, it's one of the fastest growing social-networking Web sites on the Internet. Bebo has more than 40 million members worldwide but faces stiff competition from Facebook and MySpace. Bebo also ranks as the UK's most engaging website with the most page views per usage day amongst the top 100 most popular sites *.

FACEBOOK

Facebook is a social networking website, launched on February 4, 2004. Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg, a former Harvard student. Facebook reportedly declined an offer of $750 million, and it was rumored that the asking price was as high as $2 billion. Facebook is often compared to MySpace but one significant difference between the two sites is the level of customization. Facebook is the second largest social network on the web, behind only MySpace in terms of traffic.

Facebook

Facebook events are a way for members to let friends know about upcoming events in their community and to organize social gatherings. Facebook is a massively successful social networking service that grew to prominence in virtually no time. Facebook mobile director Jed Stremel acknowledges that network members have encountered a large number of “hang-ups,” “login problems” and other bugs through the use of handheld browsers, and because the number of individuals seeking to make connections with the site on the go has purportedly grown to a population numbering some 6 million strong, the company has decided to offer wireless networks official, specialized support, which it hopes will cut user frustration and subsequently grow the mobile user base significantly. Facebook is working hard on pushing ever more deeply into the mobile market, and if Paid Content’s claims are true, Nokia phones will be receiving a nice FB-sanctioned button on their screens that will direct handset owners to the popular social network.

Social

Social networks like Facebook and MySpace are taking the web by storm because they make it easy to manage your personal data and keep in touch with people you know. Social networking has become so widespread that users of sites such as MySpace and Facebook can now be categorised into six specific types, according to a new report. In September, Divya Narendra, Cameron Winklevoss and Tyler Winklevoss, the owners of the social networking website HarvardConnection, subsequently changed to ConnectU, filed a lawsuit against Facebook, alleging that Zuckerberg had illegally used source code intended for the website they asked him to build for them.

Friends

Friends can send messages to each other, write on each other’s “walls”(personal message boards), buy virtual gifts and drinks, and uploadphotographs or videos. On February 27, 2006, Facebook began allowing college students to add high school students as friends due to requests from users. On November 7, 2007, Facebook announced Facebook Ads; Facebook Beacon, a marketing initiative which includes a system for websites to allow users to share chosen information about their activities on the sites with their Facebook friends ;[27] the capability of businesses to host pages on Facebook for various brands, products and services (Facebook Pages); a targeted ad serving program based on user and friend profile and activity data (Facebook Social Ads); and a service for providing businesses with advertisement analytic data including performance metrics.

News

In 2006, with the sale of social networking site MySpace to NewsCorp, rumors surfaced about the possible sale of Facebook to a larger media company. November 30, 2007TechnologyNewsMicrosoft Buys Stake in FacebookBy BRAD STONEThe investment ends two months of jockeying among Microsoft, Google and Yahoo for the right to invest in and forge close ties with the fast-growing social networking Web site.

Business

This enormously successful American business describes itself as "a social utility that connects you with the people around you". Facebook’s appetite for high-density, energy-efficient servers has boosted its business with Rackable, which in October identified Facebook as one of its four largest customers along with Microsoft, Yahoo and Amazon.

Facebook has succeeded so far in part because it gives people control over what and how they share information. FACEBOOK and THEFACEBOOK are registered trademarks of Facebook, Inc. Facebook Does Not Rule Out Going Public; 2008 Unlikely 01/16/2008 Mark Zukerberg, CEO of Facebook has denied industry speculation and said that the company is not planning an IPO this year.

LINKED IN

LinkedIn is a business-oriented networking site founded in December 2002 and launched in May 2003 (comparable to a social networking site), mainly used for professional networking. LinkedIn is one of the most useful business services developed in the past few years, and as already mentioned in a few comments, the size and comprehensiveness of its network is where a lot of its value is. LinkedIn is an online network of more than 17 million experienced professionals from around the world, representing 150 industries. LinkedIn is built on social-networking concepts and principles, but it is a professional-networking site.

Business

Business social networking site LinkedIn is going to be following in the footsteps of Facebook by opening up APIs over the next several months. The purpose of the site is to allow registered users to maintain a list of contact details of people they know and trust in business. It can then be used to find jobs, people and business opportunities recommended by someone in one's contact network. There are several websites that offer online business networking, including ryze, XING, Plaxo, Yahoo.

Professional

LinkedIn has a strong, established network and a product tailored to the mores of professional decorum. I guess you can say that LinkedIN is the myspace for professionals. What we all need to remember, however, is that the percentage of people working in professional jobs is still a relatively small one.

Company

The company has more than 16 million registered users, and says it is now gaining more than one million new members per month. The company is phenomenally good at understanding how networking happens offline and how it can be improved online. The company, which says it's profitable, expects up to $100 million in revenue in 2008. More recently, the company was rumored to be an acquisition target of News Corp.

LinkedIn is still growing like gang busters (adding over 180,000 users per day on top of an existing user base of 16 million) and they are going to have to take immediate action to secure them self as the leader in business networking. With 16 million members and 180k new members per week, LinkedIn is the largest and fastest growing professional network in the world.

MY SPACE

MySpace is a social networking website offering an interactive, user-submitted network of friends, personal profiles, blogs, groups, photos, music and videos internationally. MySpace is one of the most wildly successful sites in recent years, amassing 124 million profiles and transforming teen life online during its 2 1/2 years of existence. Myspace is about making a statement about your personality using pictures, layouts, music, cultural references etc.

USERS

MySpace users have the option to delete any comment and/or require all comments to be approved before posting. MySpace has recently added its own "Profile Customizer" to the site, allowing users to change their profile through MySpace. MySpace profiles for musicians are different from normal profiles in that artists are allowed to upload up to six MP3 songs.

COMPANY

Its headquarters are in Beverly Hills, California, USA,[1] where it shares an office building with its immediate owner, Fox Interactive Media; which is owned by News Corporation, which has its headquarters in New York City. The 100 millionth account was created on August 9, 2006[6] in the Netherlands[7] and a news story claimed 106 million accounts on September 8, 2006,[8] and the site reportedly attracts 230,000 new registrations per day. In the month of April 2007, MySpace launched a news service called MySpace News which displays news from RSS feeds that users submit.

MySpace is the closest humanity has ever come to a central community or a central consciousness. MySpace is a big thing nowadays, and it’s not going to slow down until something far greater comes along and steals its thunder. MySpace is one of the most well-recognized social networks in the world.

YOU TUBE

YouTube was created in mid-February 2005 by three former PayPal employees. YouTube is a video sharing website where users can upload, view and share video clips. YouTube has also been used by Australian Prime Minister John Howard in the lead up to the 2007 federal election. YouTube policy does not give permission for anyone to upload content not permitted by United States copyright law, the organization frequently removing upon request a vast quantity of infringing content. YouTube itself does not make it easy to download and save videos for offline viewing or editing nor for viewing in external players, but several third-party web sites, applications, browser extensions (such as Firefox extensions) exist for that purpose.

Youtube

YouTube has been criticized for hosting hundreds of videos of real-life animal cruelty made specifically to be shown on the site. YouTube has been blocked in several countries since its inception, including Thailand (ban now lifted) and Iran. YouTube's video playback technology is based on Macromedia's Flash Player 9 and uses the Sorenson Spark H. YouTube also converts content to other formats so that it can be viewed outside of the website. YouTube files contain an MP3 audio stream. YouTube awards videos with honors, the most popular of which is "most viewed" which are divided into four categories: today, this week, this month and all time.

Video

Videos can be rated; the average rating and the number of times a video has been watched are both published. Videos on Youtube are commented upon, remixed into playlists, and often appear on blogs, where one usually finds (more) substantial context for the video. Unregistered users can watch most videos on the site, while registered users are permitted to upload an unlimited number of videos. The uploading of pornography or videos containing nudity is prohibited. In YouTube's second year, functions were added to enhance user ability to post video 'responses' and subscribe to content feeds.

Company

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.

Technology

The San Bruno-based service uses 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. On October 12, 2006, YouTube announced that because of recent agreements with high-profile content creators, they are now required to use antipiracy software, which uses an audio-signature technology that can detect a low-quality copy of licensed video.

YouTube's popularity has led to the creation of many YouTube Internet celebrities, popular individuals who have attracted much publicity in their home countries (and sometimes world renown) due to their videos. YouTube has also become a means of promoting bands and their music. YouTube is one of the most well-known video services on the Internet, and more recently the battleground for copyright and intellectual property protection. YouTube has paved the way for a variety of other services and evolved its own services with new features such as user profiles, video rankings, and a system that lets anyone reply to a video either with text or a video.