Mashable’s Top Social Networks of 2006

December 25th, 2006

Apple I was pleased to see that after a mere day and a half away from all technology (including my iPod) the world didn’t end and this blog didn’t self-destruct in a tidal wave of spam (although I just deleted many, many spam comments that you never get to see). Anyhow, here’s a cool link to visit: Mashable’s Top Social Networks of 2006.

Needless to say, there are many, many sites on the list I’d never heard of or checked out. So it might be a good place to begin for 2007 - I should visit the more popular sites and write a post about each.

One personal way I can tell if a website is hitting critical mass is if my wife has heard of it. She’s been bugging me about putting our photos up on flickr for some time, and although she thinks the diggnation guys Alex and Kevin are annoying, she’s definitely heard of them. Meanwhile, she watches videos on YouTube, and has mentioned Pandora. I’m starting to think there should be big red “spousal radar” flag raised in my mind whenever this happens - it may indicate when a website is reaching critical mass.

Here’s the rundown on the top sites in each category, plus some thoughts where appropriate:

1. Mainstream and Large Scale Networks:

Mashable’s Choice: MySpace
People’s Choice: Multiply

The success of MySpace never ceases to confuse me. I find it slow, hard to use, and filled with annoying ads and stupid crap. Some of the people’s pages take ages to load with heaps of embedded videos, comments, photographs, and ads. Not to mention, the site’s ugliness and use of totally batty HTML code pains the web designer in me. But their network is huge - it’s immensely popular because everyone seems to be on there.

Here’s an idea of how huge and powerful the site has become: Some of my bottle cap images are used in MySpace user pages that add tons of “hits” a day. At first I thought to block access, but instead I wrote a small “visit Bottle Cap-O-Rama” in the corner of the most popular images: a free ad for me. The mere fact that I get some traffic from this admittedly ridiculous situation shows that MySpace is a force to be reckoned with, whether you use it or not.

2. Widgets and Add-Ons:

Mashable’s Choice: Slide.com
People’s Choice: Zwinky

My only experience with widgets is with OS X’s Dashboard. I’ll have to do further research on this category.

3. Social News and Social Bookmarking

Mashable’s Choice: Digg
People’s Choice: Trailfire

It’s no secret to any regular reader of this blog that I’m a regular digg user. Admittedly, I’ve gotten more annoyed with the morons on the site, but overall it still provides interesting or entertaining enough links on the front page for me to continue checking it out.

4. Sports and Fitness

Mashable’s Choice: FanNation
People’s Choice: Takkle

I have pretty much no interest in sports, but this category calls for some further research.

5. Photo Sharing

Mashable’s Choice: flickr
People’s Choice: Twango

Flickr is admirable, mostly for seeing a definite need and filling it adeptly. With the explosion of digital cameras, so many people have images they want to share. Sending them over email is harder than you’d think, especially when you have technologically clueless relatives on dial-up who wouldn’t know a JPEG from a phishing scam. Anyhow, sharing images over the web makes more sense when I think about how much easier it is to send people a link to a gallery. Bonus points for adding flickr compatibility with iPhoto. Support the Mac folks… it’s 2007.

6. Video Sharing

Mashable’s Choice: YouTube
People’s Choice: Gotuit

With Google buying YouTube for over a billion bucks, and “You” being the TIME person of the year, there’s no question YouTube dominated online video and made it mainstream. It’s also amazing to look back and realize how fast this success came - I think it was only a little over a year ago that the corny, time wasting emails my co-workers and I sent back and forth began consisting of YouTube video links. Within a few months, it became a situation where any video you could think of (say old commercials for He-Man, or Duran Duran videos), odds were that it could be found on YouTube.

Another key moment of critical mass is when not only my wife started watching YouTube videos, but the aforementioned technologically clueless relatives start sending YouTube links. When grandma wants you to check out Airbag via your Web 2.0 site, it’s time to make reservations at Denny’s.

7. Startpages

Mashable’s Choice: Netvibes
People’s Choice: Pageflakes

My start page is still Google, but I guess in the new year I should check these folks out.

8. Places and Events

Mashable’s Choice: Yelp
People’s Choice: CollegeTonight

Yelp seems to be at that point YouTube was about a year ago. Some of my co-workers are active “Yelpers” and I’m starting to visit them more and more. Expect this turning point soon: you’re thinking of trying a new restaurant and there are already several reviews on Yelp.

9. Music

Mashable’s Choice: Last.fm
People’s Choice: ReverbNation, MOG

Kind of sad, but I haven’t been using the internet as a music source for quite some time. I guess networked iTunes sharing at work and my own personal collection have pretty much satiated me. But I’ll check out these sites in the future.

10. Social Shopping

Mashable’s Choice: Etsy
People’s Choice: ThisNext

I checked out Etsy a while back, mostly enamored by their artsy Flash browsing interfaces, but it fills a niche I think will only become more popular and trendy: fun, unique stuff, made by small-scale artists, that isn’t mass produced and comes over on a boat from China. I also know a lot of art folks that sell pieces through their own sites, but it’s hard to drive traffic to a personal site. Etsy can help supplement these folks by providing a “marketplace” - maybe a real-world analogy might be an art fair.

11. Mobile

Mashable’s Choice: Twitter
People’s Choice: Wadja

Personally, I don’t get Twitter, but I suppose others might get off on this kind of thing. I suppose building a social network around the equivalent of an answering machine message is as good a reason as any these days.

12. Niche and Miscellaneous Social Networks

Mashable’s Choice: Flixster
People’s Choice: Dogster, Library Thing

MySpace is obviously not for everyone, so building a social network around a particular field of interest is an angle many sites came up with in 2006. Anyhow, Flixster is a social site based around movies, and one I should check out since I’m into classic films. Same thing with Library Thing, which is about books.

I’m skeptical about a social network around pets (that’s what Dogster is), especially since I have two indoor cats that I’d displeased to discover they have more “friends” than I do, but hey, a dog is nothing if not a social animal. Of course, the best joke of this breed is Hamsterster.com, the social pet networking site for hamsters.

But if social networking is your thing, there are tons of sites to fit any sort of hobby or niche idea you might be into.

Note: I have to mention that one of Mashable’s “hot for 2007″ sites is Fanpop (Disclosure: my pal Dave works for them). So I’m biased to see continued “Fanpop” success in 2007.

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