Web Watch - Winter 2007

Social networking sites are all the rage. One of the success stories over the past year, they allow you to keep in touch with your friends and make new ones. Here are a few of the more well known ones.

FriendsReunited (www.friendsreunited.co.uk) was one of the first of the UK social networking sites, bringing together school mates from your past. It's not as popular as it once was, partly due to its subscription model but has expanded into other areas such as the workplace. Rumoured to be dropping its 'pay to contact' policy soon.

Facebook (www.facebook.com) started out in the US as a means of college chums keeping in contact and is now one of the big 2 social networking sites. Its sheer weight of numbers and lots of time wasting add-ons make this site very popular.

MySpace (www.myspace.com) is the other large US social networking site. It experienced rapid growth , especially amongst the US teenage community, although there is a growing UK following. Very popular.

Finally there's BeBo (www.bebo.com), this is largely a European venture aimed at sharing your favourite music and videos with your friends. After a slow start this site is rapidly gaining ground on the big 2.

There are many other sites for keeping in contact. Ultimately, whichever site you use will depend on which your friends are using. Merry Christmas.

The Weaver.