Facebook (World website Rank: 2 | Social Networking Rank: 1) Facebook is a social network service and website launched in February 2004 that is operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. As of July 2010[update] Facebook has more than 500 million active users. Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommates and fellow computer science students
Twitter (World website Rank: 9 | Social Networking Rank: 2) Twitter is a website, owned and operated by Twitter Inc., which offers a social networking and microblogging service, enabling its users to send and read other users’ messages called tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the user’s profile page.
LinkedIn (World website Rank: 22 | Social Networking Rank: 3) 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 2 November 2010 (2010 -11-02), LinkedIn had more than 80 million registered users, spanning more than 200 countries and territories worldwide
MySpace (World website Rank: 37 | Social Networking Rank: 4) MySpace is a social networking website. Its headquarters are in Beverly Hills, California. Myspace became the most popular social networking site in the United States in June 2006. According to comScore, Myspace was overtaken internationally by its main competitor, Facebook, in April 2008. Myspace employs 1,000 employees, after laying off 30 percent of its workforce in June 2009
Digg (World website Rank: 122 | Social Networking Rank: 5) Digg is a social news website. Formerly, the site’s cornerstone function consisted of letting people vote stories up or down, called digging and burying, respectively, but as of Digg v4, the “bury” function has been removed. Digg’s popularity has prompted the creation of other social networking sites with story submission and voting systems. The website traffic ranked 122nd by Alexa.com as of November 13, 2010. Quantcast estimates Digg’s monthly U.S. unique visits at 15.1 million
Orkut (World website Rank: 86 | Social Networking Rank: 6) 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.
Hi5 (World website Rank: 135 | Social Networking Rank: 7) Hi5 is a social networking website. The company was founded in 2003 by Ramu Yalamanchi. Quantcast reports Hi5 has 2.7 million monthly US visitors and 46.1 million global visitors
Badoo (World website Rank: 137 | Social Networking Rank: 
Badoo is a multi-lingual social networking website, managed out of a London headquarters, but owned by a company in Cyprus. The site allows users to create profiles, send each other messages, and rate each other’s profile pictures at no cost, but charges fees for features which are designed to make the user’s profile more visible to other users, thereby increasing the opportunities to attract attention. Charging for these enhanced visibility features is the site’s primary business model.
Badoo includes a geographic proximity feature, which identifies users’ locations based on analysis of their network connection. This lets users know if there are people near to their current location who may wish to meet.
StumbleUpon (World website Rank: 159 | Social Networking Rank: 9) StumbleUpon is a discovery engine (a form of web search engine) that finds the best of the web, recommended to each unique user. It allows its users to discover and rate Web pages, photos, and videos that are personalized to their tastes and interests using peer-sourcing and social-networking principles.
Ning (World website Rank: 159 | Social Networking Rank: 10) Ning competes with social sites like MySpace, Facebook and BigTent by appealing to people who want to create their own social networks around specific interests with their own visual design, choice of features and member data. The central feature of Ning is that anyone can create their own social network for a particular topic or need, catering to specific membership bases.
At its launch, Ning was a free-form platform for the development and hosting of open-source “social applications.” The source code for Ning applications was available to users, and the service made it easy for anyone to fork a Ning application, modify its PHP code and run it as their own. Applications included photo albums, blogging software, and many for sharing business reviews. In late September 2006, Ning narrowed its focus to offering a group website, a photos website, and a videos website for people to copy and use for any purpose.
NetLog (World website Rank: 271 | Social Networking Rank: 11) Netlog (formerly known as Facebox and Bingbox) is a Belgian social networking website specifically targeted at the European youth demographic.
The site was founded in July 2003 in Ghent, Belgium, by Lorenz Bogaert and Toon Coppens, and as of September 2010[update] has 70 million registered users across 25 languages. On Netlog, members can create their own web page, extend their social network, publish their music playlists, share videos, post blogs and join groups.
MeetUp (World website Rank: 519 | Social Networking Rank: 12) Meetup.com (also called Meetup) is an online social networking portal that facilitates offline group meetings in various localities around the world. Meetup allows members to find and join groups unified by a common interest, such as politics, books, games, movies, health, pets, careers or hobbies. Users enter their ZIP code (or their city outside the United States) and the topic they want to meet about, and the website helps them arrange a place and time to meet
Friendster (World website Rank: 701 | Social Networking Rank: 13) Friendster is a social networking website. Its headquarters are in Morgan Hill, California. The service allows users to contact other members, maintain those contacts, and share online content and media with those contacts. The website is also used for dating and discovering new events, bands, and hobbies. Users may share videos, photos, messages and comments with other members via their profile and their network.
Friendster has over 115 million registered users and over 61 million unique visitors a month globally. The website receives approximately 19 billion page views per month, and is in the top 600 global websites based on web traffic.
