Social Websites websites that create communities - what is your experience?

[OCAC 0]

Social software on the web is of course not a new phenomenon. We all know friends reunited and similar pages. But I noticed that there seems to be a new wave of social websites.

 

The first one for me was the Plaxo. An excellent address book, that automatically updates the entry of your friends details, when they change their records, and you don't have to worry about not knowing their address anymore or loosing touch. They keep your address up to date. And everytime you or your friend change something in their address, it automatically updates it in your section as well, without you having to lift a finger. The responsibility for keeping the data up to date is now with your friend and you don;t have to chase them to tell you. I think that is a great way to use the internet (I worked in data cleaning for a while and it is dreadful)

 

But then a friend send me an invitation to hi5, and now I see places like [url="http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ popping up all over the place, maybe I just have not noticed it that much before.

 

From looking at their website, it seems that the interface to create your bio will be question and answer based and seems to be build on ajax, which is great. The result, from what I have seen sofar, is very professional looking. And that includes calendar, file storage, (very important for me) a message board, and other features.

One of the problems with hi5 is f.e that all your friends are immediately visible to everybody that is on your list - Apparently collectivex organises this differently. Not everyone you know is linked to you. Instead, you choose which contacts you want to share with each group.

 

So you can keep your multiple girl friends in one address book and they will never know.

 

So what is your experience with social websites? Any lost love found?

Edited February 11, 2006 by OCAC (see edit history)

[sxyloverboy 0]

well i have had quite a few social sites after me. first of all i went to snowboard.com which is as you can probably guess a snowboarding comunity but it has like gallerys for photos and videos and you had a journal and somehting. it was pretty cool actualy but once you because 'famous' it was lots of preasure i think. then i joined skateboardvillage.com which is like exactly the same thing except for skateboarding and the color scheme is a bit diffrent. and now i havent been to any of those 2 for like 2 years.

then i think the next site i joined was gaiaonline.com which was actualy really fun but then i got tired of it. its basicly a huge role play community where you have a avatar you can dress up and stuff.(no, no nudity) lol. and you got 'gold' for every thing you did on the site and you could buy cloths from it and special items. and it was funny because i always cheated it and stuff. but yeah im gone from that now too.

and the one i went to after that is the one which is still goto most on because i am a photographer and its an art community. i think this is probably the most famous one from the ones ive been to. its deviantart.com(link to my userpage). here ive had many good experiences and i stoped for 2 months once i think but now i am there again. its great integration of showing your art and communicatying with the other people. also they have chats which are done really well. most sites ive been to had some badly deisgned half hearted chat that didnt work most of the time but here it works really well.

i once had a short stop at communites.com but i got sick of that. that one is basicly just people that need to get to know poeple and its about nothing else.

anyway thats my summury of my like in social websites. id like to hear what other people have done