Social networking sites are one of the strongest forces pushing the “Web 2.0” Internet movement. The phrase “Web 2.0” was created in 2004 by O’Reilly Media and is used to describe a change in the way Internet users are interacting with the Internet and different Web sites. While there are many parts to “Web 2.0,” social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook are one of the main driving forces behind this Internet movement, and have become some of the most popular and highly visited web sites on the Internet. You can find an online community or social network for just about any interest you have or by country and language. African Americans can meet new people and share stories on BlackPlanet.com or car lovers can swap and rate pictures or get advice on Cardomain.com. There are hundreds of these sites but there are just a few that stand out as Internet leaders in social networking.

MySpace – Currently the 3rd most popular Web site in all of the United States, MySpace is by far the most popular social networking site around. It is directed and used mostly to teenagers and young adults. MySpace was one of the hottest and frequently discussed Internet acquisitions. News Corporation is now the parent company and is headquartered in New York City. MySpace allows users to create an online profile of themselves and link to their friends profiles. It allows you to upload personal photos, videos, music and other personal information. Along with the extreme popularity of MySpace, they have definitely had some of the most highly news covered controversies. Many young teenagers publish very personal information about themselves including pictures and detailed information about where they live, where they go to school, etc. While they only intended for their friends to view this information, Internet predators have been known to use MySpace as a place to research their victims. MySpace has implemented many different techniques over the years to try to protect minors on their site including adding a minimum age restriction, making it so people over a certain age cannot view minor’s profiles, preventing known sex offenders in the United States from creating a profile and many others. Despite these concerns, MySpace’s popularity continually increases and reportedly attracts 230,000 new users every single day.

Facebook – Originally geared towards college and university students, Facebook is now become popular for all ages but is still most common to college aged users. Facebook is the sixth most visited site in the United States and is the number one site for photo sharing, even more common than Flickr which is its main purpose. Facebook began as a project for sophomore Harvard student, Mark Zuckerberg and registered over half of the campus at Harvard. It gained a lot of popularity through Ivy League schools and within a year, had over 1 million registered users. While Facebook is still owned by its creator, Mark Zuckerberg, after the acquisition of MySpace there were many offers to Facebook including a reported offer of $2.3 billion by Internet giant, Google. With 18 million users, Facebook is the place to be if you’re a college student looking to network out.

LinkedIn - This social networking site is business oriented and mostly used by professionals to network with other professionals and previous co-workers, employers, etc. LinkedIn has been nicknamed “MySpace for grownups.” LinkedIn allows users to maintain a list of contact details for people they know and trust in a business sense. LinkedIn also provides features that allow you to post or search for a job, give a personal recommendation for one of your connections and also network to meet people through your existing connections. At the beginning of 2007, LinkedIn had more than 9 million registered users.

Classmates.com – Although Classmates.com isn’t quite as popular as MySpace or Facebook, it was one of the earliest social networking sites. Its traffic ranks at 499 but has over 40 million active members. Classmates.com helps members find, connect and keep in touch with friends and acquaintances that they may have lost contact with from kindergarten clear through college, and also includes work histories and United States military. A basic member registration is free but a more advanced membership will require a subscription. The Gold membership will allow you to contact long lost friends, allow you to plant reunions and events and also form a network group.

Stumbleupon – This social networking site allows users to recommend or not recommend any web site out there. Stumbleupon is a web browser plug-in. So while cruising the web, you can easily click the Thumps Up or Thumbs down button on the Stumbleupon toolbar. Highly ranked sites are recommended by Stumbleupon and receive more traffic. One of the up and coming social networking sites, Stumbleupon has over 2 million members as of March 16, 2007.

On April 18, 2007, the Internet search giant Google announced that it will be rebranding their product search web site “Froogle” as “Google Product Search” as well as making other usability changes. Google launched Froogle in 2002 but has seen “slow” growth for this search portal, something Google is unfamiliar with. The poorly named Froogle had issues from the very beginning. Google’s vice president of search product and user experience, Marissa Mayer, told CNET News.com that they didn’t understand the complications with rolling out another brand and although it was a unique and clever name, a combination of the words frugal and Google, it had issues with copyright and trademark, as was as internationalization as non-American users may not understand the combination of words.

As Google has grown to dominate the search industry, it has gone from a smaller whimsical approach to a more professional and business like plan. The original naming of Froogle demonstrates this transition. Although Froogle wasn’t completely a sinking ship, it definitely did not have the success and popularity that Google is known for. Google realized this and removed the link to Froogle from their main page last year. With a fresh name and new approach to product search, Google is hoping to see better results. Users can still use Google Product Search for just looking for products but the top products will also be included in the main site’s search results above the organic search listings.

Google has also run into mixed results with the Google Base, the site that is used to feed content into their Product Search. Google Base has been around since 2005 but most users are not sure what it is used for. Base, which refers to database, is a tool used by product sellers to list their items as well as additional information about these items. Many different types of businesses can use Google Base for advertising their items. Everything retail may be listed in Google Base but also real estate listings and job advertisements. Google Base is not strongly used but if you’re looking for the right thing, you might see them show up in your search results. If there is enough data about a certain car or real estate market location you are searching for, the Google Base results may show up on your search engine results page. But, if there are not very many Google Base entries for whatever you are searching, the chances are that the Google Base results will not be included in your search results.

Google will also use this new Product Search to promote their Google Checkout feature. Users will be able to filter just on merchants who participate in Google Checkout. Many search experts believe that an integration of all of Google’s search options may someday be included with Google’s main site. So one search will show results from the web as well as Google Product Search, Google Video, Google News and other search options. Google Product Search is yet to be released to the public but with the success rate of Google, you can expect it to do much better than the previously named Froogle.

For years and years if you wanted a good, somewhat reliable Internet browser, basically your only choice was Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. After that demise of Netscape in 2003, Mozilla began the production of new Internet browser that they wanted to compete with the giant Internet Explorer. While your average Internet user may not know or even care about the lesser known Firefox, it is beginning to become more and more common on the desktops of your average computer user. It has been five long years since the last update of Internet Explorer and the recent changes strike a remarkable similarity to those already offered in Mozilla Firefox. The long awaited update of Internet Explorer comes just as Firefox is taking more and more of its dominating market share. In October 2004, Internet Explorer was used by about 92 percent of all Internet users. In just a very quick 2 years, that number has declined to 82 percent while Firefox’s share has grown to over 12 percent. This number represents about 1 out of every 10 Internet users which may not seem like a whole lot, but take into consideration that this is an open source, free download that is not advertised, marketed or bundled with an operating system as Internet Explorer is.

While the Internet browser battle has been done before and may have fallen to Microsoft, Firefox has a step ahead and looks to be a promising competitor to Internet Explorer. One key feature to Firefox that Microsoft admits has been their problem is software updates. Mozilla is quick to update and patch any issues found while Microsoft has taken years to update and it’s definitely not because of a lack of need. Although this upgrade has been years in the making, many Internet users are not so quick to update their Internet Explorer browser. Microsoft has a long history of bugs in their initial release of any software. While they have promised more frequent updates, this may be one more reason to use Mozilla Firefox. Even though they offer similar products, the installation or upgrade of these two Internet browsers are two different stories. Installing Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 has proven to be a much lengthier process than many deem necessary. The install file is pretty large in comparison to the quick Firefox download and is definitely more involved. During an Internet Explorer install, you can expect to have to shut down your Internet security software, all of your running programs as well as reboot your computer whereas with Firefox, all you need to do is simply close any instances of Firefox you already have running.

The rise in popularity of Firefox was fueled by the open source community which leads to another key feature offered in Firefox but not Internet Explorer. Due to its open source nature, there are thousands of add-ons created by Firefox users. With computer users becoming more tech savvy, they expect to be able to customize everything on their computer and with add-ons and different themes, Firefox caters to this request. Microsoft has recently offered some add-ons but really struggle to compete with Firefox. Microsoft has featured their classic browser style for the last few years before the release of IE7 but has undergone a massive redesign that will leave Microsoft users a little confused. The overall design looks great and shows its advantage of large corporation resources over Firefox’s simple but easy to use interface.

One of the biggest features offered by Firefox before the Internet Explorer 7 update was tabbed browsing, which has been attributed as the reason for the quick popularity rise of Firefox. Microsoft was quick to incorporate the tabbed browsing feature in their latest release and tried to improve on it with a couple nice features. On the tab bar there are a couple new buttons, one being a thumbnail view of all your tabs and the other being a blank tab that quickly lets you open a new tab. While most Firefox users are probably pretty quick with the CTRL+T shortcut that opens a new tab, this feature on Internet Explorer 7 will aid those who are new to tabbed browsing. Firefox isn’t standing still though. With the release of Firefox 2, they added an impressive feature that will restore all your previous tabs if something were to crash and also a history of recently closed tabs.

Some of the latest new features that both browsers have incorporated are RSS feeds. In typical Microsoft fashion, your choices are limited to their own products for feed readers while Mozilla Firefox will allow you to subscribe with a third party newsreader. Some other small but new features were also a page zoom tool for IE7 and a handy spell checker from Firefox.

One of Internet Explorer’s downfalls has always been security and performance. On the other hand, Firefox has recognized these issues and excelled in these two areas. Security issues are probably the number one concern for a lot of users and a major reason Mozilla Firefox has become so popular. Microsoft has promised better security measures with IE7. Both Internet browsers have integrated antiphishing measures but as we’ve seen with many features, Firefox offers more flexibility and give you many more options when it comes to security. Also, their reputation for quick updates and patches helps them move past the slow-to-update Internet Explorer.

Many of the features offered by Firefox are designed more for an advanced user but its basic operation is not too tricky for a beginner either. Although Internet Explorer has the glitz and glamour advantage, its basic features still don’t compare to Mozilla Firefox. After many years of no updates, their biggest new feature was tabbed browsing which Firefox users have known and loved for years. Internet Explorer 7 has definitely come a long, long way from the previous version of Internet Explorer but Microsoft has failed to take any innovative steps to really impress Internet users. Overall, Firefox is the better browser but with its integration with Microsoft Windows, don’t expect Internet Explorer to go away anytime soon.

If you’ve ever used the Internet before, the chances are you have been to YouTube.com or received one of their many videos in your e-mail inbox. YouTube is one of the greatest success stories of Internet entrepreneurship. It was founded in February of 2005, received funding from Sequoia Capital later that year and launched by the end of the year. Within a year after its launch, YouTube was basically a household name. In November of 2006, less than a year after its launch, YouTube was purchased in one of the most talked about acquisitions ever for a whopping $1.65 billion. YouTube CEO Chad Hurley said, “By joining forces with Google, we can benefit from its global reach and technology leadership to deliver a more comprehensive entertainment experience for our users and to create new opportunities for our partners. I’m confident that with this partnership we’ll have the flexibility and resources needed to pursue our goal of building the next-generation platform for serving media worldwide.”

One of the great features and issues with YouTube that has made it so popular and frequently visited is the ability of any user to upload the videos they want. While this seems like a great idea to most people, some users abuse this ability by uploading copyrighted materials. YouTube does display a Terms of Use screen that lists different rules such as: In connection with User Submissions, you further agree that you will not: (i) submit material that is copyrighted, protected by trade secret or otherwise subject to third party proprietary rights, including privacy and publicity rights, unless you are the owner of such rights or have permission from their rightful owner to post the material and to grant YouTube all of the license rights granted herein.

Within a week of Google’s acquisition of YouTube, the lawsuits over copyright infringement had already begun just as many had speculated. Time Warner was the first to file a complaint against YouTube. YouTube’s acquisition by the corporate giant, Google, made it a prime target for copyright lawsuits. YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley states that they are looking to make this site profitable for all who are involved: “We’re committed to developing tools to identify the content and monetize it so content owners can have a new outlet for their content.”

Many business and Internet analysts are predicting YouTube is doomed and will not make it very far due to copyright infringement lawsuits. One possibility is that YouTube will be forced to remove all the copyrighted material which is one of the main draws of their web site. If this was to happen, it would leave very little interesting content, and the amount of users would sharply decline. Many comparisons are being made about YouTube to Napster, the file sharing giant that was eventually shut down due to copyright infringement lawsuits.

Just like Napster, YouTube is fighting their copyright cases with similar arguments. Some of the material posted to their web site is homemade but a large majority of it violates copyright law by sharing video of copyrighted materials like movies, music and TV shows. YouTube is quick to remove any videos that violate copyright laws or their own Terms of Service once they are made aware of it.

One advantage that YouTube has going for them already is the great business and technology minds at Google. YouTube has made partnership deals with large content providers such as CBS, BBC, Universal Music Group, Sony Music Group, Warner Music Group, the NBA, The Sundance Channel and many more. Although these agreements are great for business and may prolong the life of YouTube, it may only take company to stop this progress. Greg Sandoval states: “It only takes one unhappy media company – Disney, Sony, CBS or News Corp for example – to force the company’s hand. And the cases on this point, from Napster to Grokster at the Supreme Court, are clear.”

YouTube is undoubtedly one of the most visited and most entertaining web site available today. There will definitely be some lawsuits over content in the future that may risk the existence of this site. The acquisition of YouTube may be one of the greatest business deals to ever survive or fail; only time will tell.

One of the hottest new web development techniques around today is AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML). AJAX allows you to create interactive web applications by using a combination of JavaScript, XML and XHTML, which makes web pages feel faster because some of the data is exchanged with the server throughout the session instead of every time a page is reloaded by a user. The overall goal and purpose of AJAX is to create an interactive experience for the end user while increasing the speed and ease of use.

Pros:

• The User Experience – The number one advantage of using AJAX programming is the new and fresh interface it provides users. Users relate their experience with AJAX web pages to be more like a separate application than a standard web page. When someone clicks on a link on an AJAX web page, the page can usually be updated dynamically as opposed to a standard web page where the entire page is refreshed and it seems like a big operation. This greatly reduces the amount of click and wait time a user will experience. As people are using the Internet more and more, user interface is making a huge factor in what people do with their time online. The more attractive and easy to use a web site is, the more likely the user will return to your site.
• Flexibility and Accessibility – So many people are now using more than their home computer. Internet users access their online information from home, work, school and a variety of other places. With the use of AJAX and online applications, Internet users can access their data online from a web application. This eliminates the need to carry around expensive hardware from place to place. You can virtually access your data anywhere you can connect to the Internet. Online applications using AJAX also eliminate the need to update your software regularly. The software can be updated on the server side and display the most recent build of any program to the entire public.
• Low Bandwidth Usage – AJAX limits the calls to the server by generating the HTML within the user’s browser. Most of the requests to the browser are just for JavaScript and actual data. Since there is less data coming from the server, an AJAX web page seems to load much quicker.
• Different Platforms – With the use of AJAX and online applications, the variety of platforms out there has less of an impact on both the users and developers. Programmers won’t have to develop their software for all the different platforms available. For the users, you don’t have to worry about PC , Mac or even the up and coming Linux.
• AJAX is coming – The total impact of AJAX has yet to be seen but it is already being implemented by large corporations which is a good sign that there is still more to come. The Internet giant, Google, is already using AJAX for some of their projects including Google Maps and Gmail. AJAX meshes perfectly with the new “Web 2.0” user interaction idea; making it a strong candidate for further use.

Cons:

• Changes to the End User – AJAX technology will include small but important changes to the way an Internet user uses their browser. An AJAX page will not register itself with the browser history engine so when the user hits the back button (a very common function that everyone uses) it will not render any changes. Also, the bookmark function which is very popular among Internet users will not have the same effect as it used to. These may seem like small, insignificant changes but many users take advantage of these features daily. For some users, small changes may not be a big deal but to less experienced users who have a hard time learning new technology; this could play a big role.
• Still using JavaScript – One of the key components of AJAX is the use of JavaScript. JavaScript is a great code that features awesome interaction to users but has its own sets of con’s. JavaScript is not very friendly to search engines as the text and information within them is not visible. The other issue with JavaScript is it’s compatibility with other browsers. JavaScript information may be displayed differently between Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer.
• Search Engine Optimization – As discusses briefly in the previous Con, AJAX web pages may not be visible to the search engine’s bot that crawls the web to index different web sites. Not having your web site in the top search engine’s index can result in a quick death to your site if it depends on Internet traffic. There are techniques to avoid this issue but it will require further time and programming.
• Internet Access – With online web applications and AJAX, you obviously have to be connected to the Internet to use these. Lots of people have constant access to a bandwidth Internet connection but not everyone is able to connect at high speeds anytime which would mean that this would be a serious con for those users.

As with any new technology, AJAX has its advantages and disadvantages but with the pros mostly outweighing the cons and huge companies like Google already using AJAX, you can expect to see more and more AJAX web sites out there in the very near future.