Filed Under: Internet, People, Computing & Information Technology

DISCLAIMER: This is a list of the top 10 social networks but the order can vary, depending on the source of the information. This list, however, will give you an idea about the top social networking websites being visited by people worldwide.

Facebook. A fast-growing social networking website, it recently surpassed MySpace in terms of subscribers. In terms of number of visits (1.2 billion in January 2009 alone), this website is No. 1.

MySpace. This website attracts music lovers. From indie bands to professional artists, you can find them here. But since it’s older than Facebook, this website is fast slipping in the ranking. To date, it has more than 250 million registered users.

Twitter. This microblogging, social networking service allows people to send friends 140-character messages, similar to what we can send via our mobile phone’s SMS feature. If we’re going to look at the numbers from compete.com, 54 million people worldwide visit this website every month.

Flixster. A social network site for movie lovers. Enough said. Also a fast-growing site that has over 53 million visitors a month.

Linkedin. People joke that this website is the most formal and “boring” social network out there because it targets professionals wanting to connect with other professionals. But based on compete.com, it has been getting 42 million visitors every month. This is a social network for businesses, too.

Tagged. Tagged you’re it. No, not really but next time you get a spam invitation from tagged.com, then perhaps you’re one of the 39 million monthly visitors to this social networking website.

Classmates.com. It is the first and oldest social networking website for students. It is still getting about 35 million visitors a month.

hi5. This is popular in Angola, Portugal, Cyprus, Romania, Thailand, Central Africa and Latin America. And it’s open to users 13 years old and older. This website has over 9 million visitors and about 80 million registered users.

Friendster. Did you know that a large number of Friendster users are Filipinos? Yes, this social networking website, which has more than 7 million monthly visitors, has over 90 million registered users. It’s popular in Southeast Asia, including Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore and of course, the Philippines.

Orkut. Google’s own social networking website is popular in Brazil, Paraguay, India, Pakistan and Estonia. It has over 67 million registered users and about 5 million monthly visitors.

The list goes on.

It also changes very quickly.

Another list

Here’s another list compiled by compete.com.

1. facebook.com
2. myspace.com
3. twitter.com
4. flixster.com
5. linkedin.com
6. tagged.com
7. classmates.com
8. myyearbook.com
9. livejournal.com
10. imeem.com
11. reunion.com
12. ning.com
13. blackplanet.com
14. bebo.com
15. hi5.com
16. yuku.com
17. cafemom.com
18. friendster.com
19. xanga.com
20. 360.yahoo.com
21. orkut.com
22. urbanchat.com
23. fubar.com
24. asiantown.net
25. tickle.com

Social network hi5 is introducing a casual games section to its site today, complete with its recently-launched virtual currency (called “Coins”) and a range of more than 40 arcade, casino, card, sports and strategy games. It’s the latest move in the company’s effort to focus on “social entertainment” — later this year, it plans to introduce instant messaging (wrapped into games, as well), avatars and eventually a full-blown virtual world.
The company is focusing on virtual goods as a way of making money. Although the games are free now, users will be able to buy the currency using their credit cards, then use it to purchase game upgrades, unlock higher levels and downloads — and eventually pay to participate in the virtual world. This feature and revenue stream have proven especially popular with teen and early-20s social network users in China and other Asian countries. Hi5 has more than 60 million monthly active users in a diverse array of countries, from Mexico to Thailand to Romania — mostly between the ages of 15 and 24 (not lucrative ad markets). To make more money from these users, the company is also working to offer games that are specific to various geographies, as it has previously done with its virtual gifts. One day, you might be able to buy a top virtual soccer star in a soccer game on hi5, for example.

The games in the official hi5 games section currently include hi5 branding, but they were developed by third parties, and the site says it is open to talking with other third-party developers about adding their games to the platform. San Francisco-based hi5 already offers a developer platform that some companies use to publish casual games, but the new dedicated games section has the added benefit of, well, being a special promotional section for games, and tight integration with things like the virtual currency. The company isn’t disclosing specifics about how it’s structuring revenue-sharing with game-development partners.

The company is already starting to make money from the site’s new section. The games are Flash-based, and already a place where hi5 is starting to serve “pre-roll” ads that run before a user can begin playing a game. This ad space can be integrated with other ad campaigns running on the hi5 site. (Although when I went to play the soccer game, I got an ad for the New York Times.) The big question is how much San Francisco-based hi5 can make from its ads and virtual goods. Gifts were introduced in early December before the holidays. The company says it’s still too early to start sharing numbers.

hi5, which launched in late 2003, is a massive MySpace-style social network. The site targets the teens and twenties demographic and claims to have over 40 million members. According to the latest Hitwise stats (June ‘06), hi5 is the 8th most visited US social network. However, the site is losing market share - it now accounts for 0.78% of the social networking market, down from 1.06% in May. And although not explicitly stated, Hi5 appears to be more targeted than MySpace.

hi5 Profiles

Like most social networks, hi5 gives users a profile page which includes their name, gender, location and a profile picture. Users must be 13 or over, but obviously there’s no way to verify a member’s age. On sign up, the site strongly encourages users to import their friends from Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail and and AOL Mail - so strongly, in fact, that it’s hard to skip this process.

Profile pages are located at username.hi5.com. What’s more, these pages are fully customizable: you can can edit the color of the background, text and links, change the default font or add a background image. For more advanced customization, users can edit the html code - this would allow you to insert videos from YouTube and Google Video, images from Photobucket and slideshows from RockYou. However, this feature seems far less popular than on MySpace, and most of the pages still carry the default design.

Friends, Photos and Other Features

hi5 also features a “degrees of separation” system similar to Friendster - your network consists of 1st, 2nd and 3rd degree friends, and you can decide whether to make your profile publicly viewable or only accessible to members of your network. You can add friends by sending a friend request or inviting people via email. In addition, you can rediscover old friends by adding your school in the “Classmates” section.

The hi5 feature set is fairly standard: you can add comments to profile pages, post items on the bulletin boards, add members to your favorites, join groups and send messages to other users. hi5 also has a very basic blogging tool under the “Journal” section, but it seems that this is rarely used.

One popular feature is photo hosting: users can create up to 100 albums, each containing a maximum of 250 photos. Also popular are the Flash-powered chatrooms, which are based around locations or interests. However, hi5’s most unique feature is the ability to award “Fives” to other users. Fives are icons that describe a person’s personality or their relationship to you - examples include Best Friend, Better Half, Brother, Classmate, Nerd, Party Animal, Diva, Hero and Whiz Kid. If a user accepts a Five, it will appear on his or her profile page.

hi5 Music

hi5 Music, which is currently in beta, is broadly similar to the hugely popular MySpace Music service. Bands create their own profile pages to promote their music and connect with fans. Each band page also includes a Flash player - users can play the tracks, add them to their own pages or, in some cases, buy them from the iTunes Music Store. Popular styles include HipHop, Reggaeton and R&B.

hi5 is a worthy rival to Facebook, Bebo, Multiply, Piczo, Tagworld and the rest. Nonetheless, MySpace continues to steal market share from all these networks.