THE SOCIAL NETWORKING SERVICES

hi5 is a social networking website, which, throughout 2008, was one of the top 20 most visited sites on the Internet (among people who have the Alexa toolbar installed on their browser. The company was founded in 2003 by Ramu Yalamanchi who is also the current CEO. As of January 2009, hi5 claims to have over 60 million active members.

In hi5, users create an online profile in order to show information such as interests, age and hometown and upload user pictures where users can post comments. hi5 also allows the user to create personal photo albums and set up a music player in the profile. Users can also send friend requests via e-mail to other users. When a person receives a friend request, he or she may accept or decline it, or block the user altogether. If the user accepts another user as a friend, the two will be connected directly or in the 1st degree. The user will then appear on the person's friend list and vice-versa.

According to comScore, in 2008 Hi5 was the third most popular social networking site in terms of monthly unique visitors.

Although created and headquartered in the United States, it is more popular in other countries, being ranked 16th in the world only among people who have the Alexa toolbar installed on their browser but only 84th in the US

MySpace is a social networking website with an interactive, user-submitted network of friends, personal profiles, blogs, groups, photos, music, and videos for teenagers and adults internationally. Its headquarters are in Beverly Hills, California, USA,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. In June 2006, MySpace was the most popular social networking site in the United States. According to comScore, MySpace was overtaken internationally by main competitor Facebook in April 2008, based on monthly unique visitors. The company employs 300 staff and does not disclose revenues or profits separately from News Corporation. The 100 millionth account was created on August 6, 2006 in the Netherlandsand the site counted approximately 106 million accounts on September 8, 2006,

• MySpace features
  • Bulletins
  • Groups
  • MySpaceIM
  • MySpaceTV
  • Applications
  • MySpace Mobile
  • MySpace News
  • MySpace Classifieds
  • MySpace Karaoke
  • MySpace Polls
  • MySpace forums

Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service. It enables its users to send and read other users' updates (known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length. Updates are displayed on the user's profile page and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends (delivery to everyone being the default). Users can send and receive updates via the Twitter website, SMS, RSS (receive only), or through applications such as Tweetie, Twitterrific, and Feedalizr. The service is free to use over the web, but using SMS may incur phone services provider fees.

Four gateway numbers are currently available for SMS: short codes for the United States, Canada, and India, and a United Kingdom-based number for international use. Several third parties offer posting and receiving updates via email.