Facebook.com was a website that came out of Palo Alto, California and it got its start in February 2004. Facebook is gaining in popularity and presently boasts more than eight million members and fills the number two spot next to MySpace. ComScore ranks Facebook.com as the “seventh-most-trafficked website” on the Internet and according to Hitwise (the foremost tracking service on the web) Facebook has a market share of 7.7 percent. The majority of members at Facebook are students who come from 22,000 supported high schools as well as 2,200 supported colleges. Two thirds of the member’s of Facebook.com visit the website at least once daily if not more. Facebook.com alleges that it is the number one site to visit for photos and it has more than 1.5 million images added to the site on a day-to-day basis.

Another knock-off to MySpace that is sparking competition is vMix.com. This website originated in San Diego and had its launch in November 2005. The Nielsen/ NetRatings put vMix as number five among the social networking websites of its kind and since its inception vMix.com has shown consistent growth on a monthly basis that is in excess of 50 percent. Projecting into the near future, vMix.com expects to boast five million visitors every month by the end of December of this year. This website focuses to a large extent on both photos and short videos although it filters out all material it believes to be offensive or objectionable before it is posted to the website.

Xanga.com is only a few months old having start in April 2006 but it has quickly gained ground among young adults and has already become the number three social networking site of its kind. Xanga was developed in New York City and has approximately 27 million users across the globe and boasts a traffic share of 3.1 percent. Xanga actually dates back to 1999 when it went under a different domain name and was a website that was primarily for sharing both book and music reviews with likeminded individuals.  Members can create their own web pages at Xanga and online diaries and blogs are a big part of the appeal of this website.

Launched in 1999, in a month unspecified, Whyville.net was created in Pasadena, California and presently has 1.8 million users. This website was developed by Caltech scientists who felt that the age group from 8 to 15 was unrepresented on the web and wanted to give this group of young people a place where they could communicate, play and learn with each other. Education is the number one focus of Whyville. It is estimated that approximately 60,000 new people sign up on a monthly basis.

All of these social networking sites just like MySpace allow users to create their own web page and include their online profile, photos, blogs and ability to send messages to other members. Most also allow to you add a certain amount of friends names to your web page. Although there is competition out there, some say it is healthy and will serve to keep MySpace on its toes. According to statistics compiled by Hitwise, at the end of the week of July 22, 81 percent of visits to online communities for social networking were to MySpace (which translates to 52 million visitors) while Facebook only received 7.7 5 of visits and was ranked at number two.

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