1. Facebook

Launched in February 2004, Facebook is the leading social networking site with over 500 million active users as of July 2010. Users can add friends, send messages, share videos and pictures and update personal profiles and these are what makes this site very popular.

www.facebook.com

2. YouTube

This is a video sharing site launched in February 2005.  Users can upload, share, view and using third party applications download videos which are in flash format.  Most contents on this site are uploaded by individuals and this is the reason behind its success in the last 5 years.

www.youtube.com

3. MySpace

MySpace is a social networking site and it is owned by News Corporation.  MySpace allows its members to stay anonymous using screen names also called nicknames and just like Facebook, users can have profiles, upload pictures, share notes and chat online.

www.myspace.com

4. Twitter

Founded in 2006, Twitter is a social networking and microblogging service website that enables its users to send and read messages from other users they are following, also called tweets. The popularity of twitter arose due to its simplicity and compatibility with sms

www.twitter.com

5. Flickr

Flicker is a video and image hosting site, online community and web services suite launched in February 2004.  It is widely used by users to share images and videos and for bloggers to host images that are embedded in social media and blogs.

www.flickr.com

6. Photobucket

This is a slideshow creation, video hosting, photo sharing and image hosting website founded in 2003.  It is more popular for use in remote storage of avatars displayed on internet forums, personal photographic albums and storing videos.  Users can keep their albums private, password protected access or open to the public.

www.photobucket.com

7. LinkedIn

This is a business oriented social networking site.  It was founded in 2002 and launched in May 2003 and mostly used for professional networking.  It has over 75 million registered users from over 200 countries and territories all over the world.  It is available in German, English, Portuguese, French, Spanish and Italian.

www.linkedin.com

8. Digg

Digg is a social news website where users are allowed to vote for stories (digg) to promote them.  It started out as an experiment in November 2004 and has become very popular for the reason that it now features friend’s’ lists, the ability to digg any story and great interface.

www.digg.com

9. Ning

Ning is an online platform where users can create their own social networks. It started out in October 2004 but was launched publicly in October 2005.  Users can use the service for free or upgrade to paid accounts.

www.ning.com

10. Yelp

Yelp (a contraction of Yellow pages) features social networking, local search and user review services.  As of early 2010, it had over 31 million monthly unique users and is commonly used by people as a local research website.  It was founded in October 2004.

www.yelp.comw

11. Tagged

This is a social networking website that allows users to play games, share virtual gifts and tags and to suggest and meet new people with similar interests. It has been around since 2004 and has over 26 million monthly users all over the world.

www.tagged.com

12. Squidoo

Being one of the top 500 most visited worldwide, the popularity of Squidoo came about because of its search capabilities.  It is primarily a community website where members can create pages (lenses) for subjects of interests and share with other users.  It was started in October 2005 but came out of the beta stages two months later.

www.squidoo.com

13. Scribd

Scribd is a Web 2.0 based document-sharing site where users can post documents in various formats then embed into a web page using the iPaper format.  It was founded in 2006 and now publishes ebooks, research papers and other academic content as we.

www.scribd.com

14. StumbleUpon

This is a discovery engine designed to uncover the best of the web and recommend to other users.  Users can find and rate photos, web pages and videos personalized to their interests and tastes using social-networking and peer-sourcing principles.  It was founded in November 2001.

www.stumbleupon.com

15. Hi5

Hi5 is basically a social networking site founded in 2003.  It allows its users to create online profiles with personal information, interests and location; upload pictures and videos and post comments.  It also allows users to create photo albums, play online games and set up music players.

www.hi5.com

16. Bebo

Launched in 2005, Bebo is a social networking website owned by AOL Inc.  Members have personal profile page where they post blogs, music, pictures, videos and questionnaires for other users to answer.  Users can also add friends, send messages, update profiles and notify friends.

www.bebo.com

17. Reddit

Reddit is a social news website that allows users to browse and submit links to news contents online for other users to read or vote.  The most successful links reach the front page.  Reddit was launched in 2005 as a news aggregation, general discussion and advice forum.

www.reddit.com

18. myYearbook

This is a social networking website that stands out as different from other websites in that users are able to meet new people by creating profiles, interacting through real-time stream chatter, sending virtual gifts and playing online games.  It was created in spring 2005.

www.myyearbook.com

19. Technorati

Technorati is an Internet search engine used to search blogs.  It was founded in November 2002 and has currently indexed over 250 million pieces of tagged social media and over 112.8 million blogs.  Users find it simple to use an easy to search for blogs with specific contents.

www.technorati.com

20. Kaboodle

This is a fun shopping community that enables people to recommend and discover new shopping things right on their browsers.  It was launched in 2005 and has grown to become one of the most important shopping tools online.

www.kaboodle.com

21. Friendster

Friendster was founded in 2002 and it Is a social networking site that enables users to contact other users, maintain contacts and share online content and media with them.  It is also a dating website and used to discover new events, hobbies and bands.

www.friendster.com

22. Flixster

This is a social movie site where users share movie ratings, meet new people with similar movie tastes and discover new movies.  It was founded in 2005 and has been the parent of website Rotten Tomatoes from January 2010.

www.flixster.com

23. Xanga

Xanga is a site that hosts photoblogs, weblogs and social networking profiles of its members.  It was started in 2009 as a site to share music and book reviews but now has over40 million all over the world.

www.xanga.com

24. Epinions

Epinions is a general consumer review site established in 1999 but was acquired by eBay in 2003.  Visitors can read product reviews to help them decide on what to purchase or join and provide reviews on a variety of items.

www.epinions.com

25. Plaxo

This is a social networking service and an online address book launched in November 2002.  It provides automatic updating of contact information and to create connections between users in each other’s contacts list.

www.plaxo.com

26. MyBlogLog

This is a social network site for the blogger community.  It is based on the interaction facilitated by a web widget that members install on their blogs where users can subscribe to them and bookmark blogs for future visits.  It was established in January 2005.

www.mybloglog.com

27. Yuku

This is an internet forum which was established in September 2005 but went public in January 2008.  It describes itself as a message board where members can enjoy tools such as tags and RSS.

www.yuku.com

28. MetaFilter

Also known as MeFi, MetaFilter is a community weblog that enables members to discuss contents they discover on the internet and to share links to different media.  It was founded in 1999.

www.metafilter.com

29. BlackPlanet

BlackPlanet is a social-networking site launched in September 2009 that targets the African American community.  It allows members to meet new people, create profiles and share media online.

www.blackplanet.com

30. Care2

Care2 was founded in 1998 by Randy Paynter and is a social network site that helps in connecting activists from all corners of the world.  Its membership is approximately 14 million and connects individuals, responsible businesses and organizations.

www.care2.com

31. GetSatisfaction

This is a technical support site founded in January 2007 but launched in September of the same year.  It provides an interaction platform for clients and businesses were users post complains, ask questions or submit ideas which are responded to by companies.

www.getsatisfaction.com

32. FriendFeed

This is a real-time feed aggregator designed to consolidate updates from social networking websites, blogs, social media and micro-blogging updates and other RSS or Atom feed sites to stream information for sharing or commenting by friends.  It was launched in October 2007

www.friendfeed.com

33.ClipMarks

Clipmarks is a social bookmarking site that aims at helping users collect, organize and share information on their browsers.  It can collect text, pages, videos and pictures among other types of media.

www.clipmarks.com

34. CafeMom

CafeMom is a social networking site that targets mothers and offers member generated contents including journals, photos, groups, polls and profiles.  It was launched in December 2006 and was the most trafficked website by women within a year of its inception.

www.cafemom.com

35. NewsVine

This is a community-powered website for collaborative journalism news whose contents are posted by users and syndicated in mainstream sources.  Users write articles, post links to other news articles and discuss items.  It was established in March 2006.

www.newsvine.com

36. Omgili Ltd

Founded in December 2006, Omgili is an acronym for “Oh My God I Love It”.  This is a vertical search engine which focuses on “many to many” user generated content platforms like forums, discussion groups and answer boards among others.

www.omgili.com

37. Gigya

This private technology company was founded in October 2006 in Tel Aviv, Israel but has offices in Palo Alto, California.  It offers a Saas-based technology to sites that aggregate social APIs like Facebook for Websites, Google, Windows Live, Twitter, LinkedIn and others.

www.gigya.com

38. Ballhype

This is an application based sports aggregator which pulls information from thousands of sports blogs and allows users to create and post their own content.  Users then vote for popular content.  Other than that, it has social networking features like friends, profiles and groups.

www.ballhype.com

39. Current

This is a multi-platform company that investigates and explores interesting, entertaining and popular stories.  It connects users with happenings around the world and targets people aged between 18 and 34.  It was established in August 2005.

www.current.com

40. Revver

Revver is a website that hosts user-generated content and allows members to share videos and pictures.  Videos can be displayed, shared and downloaded in QuickTime or flash format.  It was established in 2004.

www.revver.com

41. Ping

Ping.fm is a free micro-blogging and social networking web service which allows users to update their statuses on different social sites at a go.  Its services are classified into micro-blogs, status updates and blogs and updates can be sent to each group separately.  It was established in March 2008.

www.ping.fm

42. Tribe

Also referred to as tribe.net, this website hosts a community of friends just like an ordinary social site although a majority of its members are from the San Francisco bay area.  It was founded in early 2003.

www.tribe.net

43. Magnify

This is a video publishing platform which simplifies the process of integrating user generated video onto a website or a blog.  Visitors promote the videos to make owners build more vibrant video community.

www.magnify.net

44. Diigo

Diigo (Digest of Internet Information, Groups and Other stuff) is a social bookmarking site where users can bookmark and tag web pages.  Other than that, it allows users to highlight any parts of a webpage or attach sticky notes to a whole page or to a specific highlight.  It was launched in July 2006.

www.diigo.com

45. DZone

This is a technology publishing website which is aimed at producing valuable content for developers and software architects all over the world.  Users may interact, comment and share posts, news, articles, tutorials, announcements and videos.

www.dzone.com

46. Xing

Xing is a professional network service that brings together small-world professionals over 200 countries.  It displays how each member is connected to another and offers discussion forums, even coordination, personal profiles, groups and other social site features.  It was established in November 2003

www.xing.com

47. Faves

Faves is a social networking and bookmarking site.  It installs a browser button that allows users to “fave” a page and has wider range of functionalities including friends, rating and interactions of users.  It was founded in 2004

www.faves.com

48. TwitPic

TwitPic is a social networking tool that enables users to post pictures to the twitter. It is commonly used

by citizen journalists to upload and distribute images in near real-time. This site was launched in 2008

by Noah Everett.

www.twitpic.com

49.Ecademy

This is the leading UK networking platform that offers a variety of services related to networking e.g. forums, classified and jobs.  It has several membership levels with different benefits.  Users design their own profiles since the site has a more flexible page design.

www.ecademy.com

50. Twine

Established in October 2007, Twine is a social web service for storing, authoring and discovering information.  It combines a variety of services including wikis, forums, newsgroups and databases.

www.twine.com