This article needs to be updated.(June 2024) |
This is a list of notable active virtual communities with more than 1 million registered members.
Name | Description or focus | Date launched | Registered users | Registration | Global Alexa [1] page ranking |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Avaaz | Global community and political activism | 2007 | 69,000,000 | Open | N/A |
BlackPlanet | Black Americans | 1999 | 20,000,000 [2] | Open | 7,193 [3] |
Blind | Employees | 2013 | 2,000,000 [4] | Open with verified work email | 43,680 [5] |
Bluesky | Microblogging | 2024 | 24,000,000 [6] | Open to people 13 and older | N/A |
Busuu | Language learning community (headquartered in Madrid, Spain) | 2008 | 12,000,000[ citation needed ] | Open | 8,049 [7] |
Buzznet | Music and pop-culture | 2005 | 10,000,000 [8] | Open | 6,955 [9] |
CafeMom | Mothers | 2006 | 1,250,000 [10] | Open to moms and moms-to-be | 1,293 [11] |
Care2 | Green living, social activism, animal rights | 1998 | 9,961,947 [12] | Open | 1,930 [13] |
CaringBridge | Not for profit providing free websites that connect family and friends during a serious health event, care and recovery. [14] | 1997 | 9,500,000 [15] | Open to people 18 and older [16] | 4,279 [17] |
Classmates.com | School, college, work and the military | 1995 | 50,000,000 [18] | Open to people 18 and older [19] | 3,284 [20] |
CouchSurfing | Worldwide network for making connections between travelers and the communities they visit | 2003 | 18,000,000 [21] | Open | 2,231 [22] |
Cyworld | General, popular in South Korea | 1999 | 24,000,000 [23] | Open | 1,616 [24] |
delicious | Social bookmarking allowing users to locate and save websites that match their own interests | 2003 | 8,822,921 [25] | Open | 436 [26] |
DeviantArt | Art community | 2000 | 22,000,000 [27] | Open to people 13 and older | 131 [28] |
Duolingo | Language learning community and forums [29] | 2011[ citation needed ] | 500,000,000 [30] | Open to all ages. Forums open to people 13 and older [31] | 547 [32] |
Draugiem.lv | General (primarily Latvia, Lithuania, and Hungary) | 2004 | 2,600,466 [33] | Invitation only | 2,698 [34] |
Douban | Chinese Web 2.0 website providing user review and recommendation services for movies, books, and music | 2005 | 46,850,000 [35] | Open | 106 [36] |
DXY.cn | Chinese online community for physicians, health care professionals, pharmacies and facilities | 2000[ citation needed ] | 2,000,000 [37] | Open | 8,367 [38] |
Edmodo | Social learning network for schools | 2008 | 50,000,000+ [39] | Open to students, teachers and parents | 2,367 [40] |
English, baby! | Students and teachers of English as a second language | 2000 | 1,600,000 [41] | Open | 29,585 [42] |
General | 2004 | 2.8×10 9 [43] | Open to people 13 and older | 3 [44] | |
Fetlife | People who are into BDSM | 2008 | 1,200,000 [45] | Open to people "of legal age to see adult content" | 4,131 [46] |
Fishbrain | Mobile social network, fishing | 2010 | 2,200,000 [47] | Open | 436,164 [48] |
Flixster | Movies | 2007 | 63,000,000 [49] | Open to people 13 and older | 4,012 [50] |
Flickr | Photo sharing, commenting, photography related networking, worldwide | 2004 | 32,000,000 [51] | Open | 48 [52] |
Fotki | Photo sharing, video hosting, photo contests, journals, forums, flexible privacy protection, friend's feed, audio comments and unlimited custom design integration | 1998 | 1,632,565 | Open | 8,011 [53] |
Fotolog | Photoblogging, popular in South America and Spain | 2002 | 20,000,000 [54] | Open | 3,168 [55] |
Foursquare | Location-based mobile social network | 2009 | 20,000,000 [56] | Open | 817 [57] |
Friendster | General, popular in Southeast Asia and formerly in the western world | 2002 | 90,000,000 [58] | Open to people 16 and older | 12,167 [59] |
Gaia Online | Anime and games, popular in the US, Canada and Europe, and moderately popular in Asia | 2003 | 23,523,663 [60] | Open to people 13 and older | 6,277 [61] |
Geni.com | Families, genealogy | 2007 | 15,000,000 [62] | Open | 5,958 [63] |
GetGlue | Social network for entertainment | 2008 | 2,000,000 [64] | Open | 3,735 [65] |
Goodreads | Library cataloging, book lovers | 2006 | 90,000,000 [66] | Open | 327 [67] |
GrabCAD | GrabCAD Community is the largest online CAD library, design and 3D printing tutorials, and a network of additive professionals | 2009 | 11,000,000 [68] | Open | N/A |
Habbo | General for teens. Over 31 communities worldwide. Chat room and user profiles. | 2000 | 268,000,000 [69] [70] [71] | Open to people 13 and older | 15,255 [72] |
HER | Sapphic community app for queer women, non-binary and trans people. Community groups, online events and IRL events. 114 countries. 15 million users. | 2015 | 15,000,000 [73] | Open to people 18 and over | 1,230 |
hi5 | General, popular in Nepal, Mongolia, Thailand, Romania, Jamaica, Central Africa, Portugal and Latin America | 2003 | 80,000,000 [74] | Open to people 13 and older | 902 [75] |
Hyves | General, mostly popular in the Netherlands. | 2004 | 10,097,000 [76] | Open | 2,243 [77] |
General | 2010 | 2×10 9 [78] | Open | 38[ citation needed ] | |
Itsmy | Mobile community worldwide, blogging, friends, personal TV-shows | 2008 | 2,500,000 [79] | 770,100 [80] | |
iWiW | Hungary | 2002 | 4,000,000 [81] | Invite-only | 3,831 [82] |
Jiepang | Location-based mobile social network, in the Chinese language | 2010 | 3,000,000 [83] | Open | 14,790 [84] |
Kiwibox | General | 1999 | 2,400,000 [85] | Open to people 13 and older | 104,563 [86] |
Kobo | Reading platform and social network | 2009 | 14,500,000 [87] | Open | 7,277 [88] |
Koofers | Social studying network for college students | 2008 | 1,000,000 [89] | Open | 97,090 [90] |
Last.fm | Music | 2002 | 30,000,000 [91] | Open | 772 [92] |
LibraryThing | Book lovers | 2005 | 1,300,000 [93] | Open to people 13 and older | 10,800 [94] |
LinguaLeo | Online English language learning website, popular among the Russian-speaking diaspora | 2010 | 3,749,061 [95] | Open | 7,480 [96] |
Business and professional networking | 2003 | 774,000,000 [97] | Open to people 18 and older | 12 [98] | |
LiveJournal | Blogging, popular in Russia and among the Russian-speaking diaspora abroad | 1999 | 17,564,977 [99] | Open (OpenID) | 115 [100] |
Livemocha | Online language learning | 2007 | 5,000,000 [101] | Open | 4,100 [102] |
Mastodon | An open-source, self-hosted and globally interconnected microblogging community | 2016 | 8,700,000 [103] | Open, depends on the instance | NA |
mixi | Japan | 2000 | 24,323,160 [104] | Open | 232 [105] |
Miiverse | Social Network for Nintendo's Wii U home console and 3DS handheld family where users can post about games and ask for help on a particular game | 2012 | 4,500,000 | Nintendo Network members only | NA |
MocoSpace | Mobile community, worldwide | 2005 | 3,000,000 [106] | Open to people 14 and older | 9,882 [107] |
MyHeritage | Family-oriented social network service | 2003 | 30,000,000 [108] | Open | 3,756 [109] |
MyLife | Locating friends and family, keeping in touch (formerly Reunion.com) | 2002 | 51,000,000 [110] | Open | 1,765 [111] |
Myspace | General | 2003 | 30,000,000+ [112] [113] | Open to ages 13 and older | 161 [114] |
Nasza-klasa.pl | School, college and friends, popular in Poland | 2006 | 11,000,000 [115] | Open | 75,145 [116] |
Netlog | General, popular in Europe, Turkey, the Arab world and Québec, Canada. Formerly known as Facebox, Bingbox and Redbox. [117] | 1999 | 95,000,000 [118] | Open to people 13 and older | 2,621 [119] |
Nexopia | Canada | 2003 | 1,400,000 [120] | Open to people 13 and older [121] | 25,241 [122] |
Odnoklassniki | Connecting with old classmates, popular in Russia and former Soviet republics | 2006 | 45,000,000 [123] | Open | 65 [124] |
Open Diary | First online blogging community, founded in 1998 | 1998 | 5,000,000 [125] | Open to people 13 and older | 28,134 [126] |
Plaxo | Aggregator | 2002 | 50,000,000 [127] | Open | 5,310 [128] |
Ravelry | Knitting and crochet | 2007 | 6,700,000 [129] | Open | 5,189 [130] |
Social news, link sharing and commenting | 2005 | 50,000,000 [131] | Open | 8 [132] | |
Sina Weibo | Social microblogging site in China | 2009 | 300,000,000 [133] | Open | 28 [134] |
Sonico.com | General, popular in Latin America and Spanish and Portuguese speaking regions | 2007 | 50,000,000 [135] [136] | Open to people 13 and older | 2,676 [137] |
SoundCloud | Repository of original music pieces and networking | 2008 | 10,000,000 [138] | Open | 299 [139] |
Stack Overflow | Question and answer knowledge market site for programmers | 2008 | 16,000,000 [140] | Open to people 13 and older | 41 [141] |
Steemit | Blockchain-based social networking | 2016 | 1,300,000 [142] | Open | 5,577 [143] |
StudiVZ | University students, mostly in German-speaking countries. School students and those out of education sign up via its partner sites SchülerVZ and MeinVZ. | 2005 | 17,000,000 [144] | N/A | |
Tagged | General | 2004 | 100,000,000 [145] | Open | 288 [146] |
Taringa! | General (primarily Argentina) | 2004 | 11,000,000 [147] | Open to people 13 and older | 214 [148] |
TravBuddy.com | Travel | 2005 | 1,588,000 [149] | Open to people 18 and older | 21,523 [150] |
General, microblogging, RSS, updates | 2006 | 330,000,000 [151] | Open to all ages [152] | 12 [153] | |
Tylted | Mobile social game network [154] | 2007 | 3,000,000 [155] | Open to people 14 and older | 737,508 [156] |
Vkontakte | General, including music upload, listening and search. Popular in Russia and former Soviet republics. | 2006 | 208,833,674 [157] | Open | 38 [158] |
Vampirefreaks.com | Gothic and industrial subculture | 1999 | 1,931,049 [159] | Open to users 13 and over | 21,052 [160] |
Viadeo | Global social and campus networking available in English, French, German, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese | 2004 | 35,000,000 [161] | Open/lift | 435 [162] |
WAYN | Travel and lifestyle | 2003 | 10,000,000 [71] | Open to people 18 and older | 1,367 [163] |
WeeWorld | Teenagers –10 to 17 | 2000 | 30,000,000 [164] | Open to ages 13 and older | 18,317 [165] |
Xanga | Blogs and "metro" areas | 1999 | 27,000,000 [166] | Open | 3,943 [167] |
Business (primarily Europe, specifically Germany, Austria, and Switzerland) | 2003 | 11,100,000 [168] | Open | 270 [169] |
Name | Description or focus | Date launched | Date closed | Peak registered users | Registration |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Bebo | General | 2005 [170] | 2013 | 117,000,000 [171] | Open to people 13 and older |
Friends Reunited | UK-based, school, college, work, sport and streets | July 2000 | 26 February 2016 [172] | 23,800,000 (2010) | Open to people 13 and older |
Orkut | General, owned by Google Inc. Popular in India and Brazil. [173] | 22 January 2004 | 30 September 2014 | 100,000,000 [174] | Open to people 18 and older, (Google login) |
Raptr | Video games | 2008 | July 2018 | 25,664 [175] | Open |
Renren | Significant site in China, known as 校内 (Xiaonei) until August 2009. | 2005 | 2022 | 160,000,000 [176] | Open |
Skyrock | Social network in French-speaking world | 2002 | 2023 | 22,000,000 [177] | Open |
StumbleUpon | Stumble through websites that match users' selected interests | 2001 | June 30, 2018 | 20,000,000 [178] | Open |
We Heart It | Image-based social network | 2008 | 2023 | 25,000,000 [179] | Open to ages 13 and older |
Alexa Internet, Inc. was a web traffic analysis company based in San Francisco, California. It was founded as an independent company by Brewster Kahle and Bruce Gilliat in 1996. Alexa provided web traffic data, global rankings, and other information on over 30 million websites. It was acquired by Amazon in 1999 for $250 million in stock. Amazon discontinued the Alexa Internet service on May 1, 2022.
Orkut was a social networking service owned and operated by Google. The service was designed to help users meet new and old friends and maintain existing relationships. The website was named after its creator, Google employee Orkut Büyükkökten.
LinkedIn is a business and employment-focused social media platform that works through websites and mobile apps. It was launched on May 5, 2003 by Reid Hoffman and Eric Ly. Since December 2016, LinkedIn has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft. The platform is primarily used for professional networking and career development, and allows jobseekers to post their CVs and employers to post jobs. From 2015, most of the company's revenue came from selling access to information about its members to recruiters and sales professionals. LinkedIn has more than 1 billion registered members from over 200 countries and territories.
Myspace is a social networking service based in the United States. Launched on August 1, 2003, it was the first social network to reach a global audience and had a significant influence on technology, pop culture and music. It also played a critical role in the early growth of companies like YouTube and created a developer platform that launched companies such as Zynga, RockYou, and Photobucket, among others, to success. From 2005 to 2009, Myspace was the largest social networking site in the world.
Yahoo! News is a news website that originated as an internet-based news aggregator by Yahoo!. The site was created by Yahoo! software engineer Brad Clawsie in August 1996. Articles originally came from news services such as the Associated Press, Reuters, Fox News, Al Jazeera, ABC News, USA Today, CNN and BBC News.
Mininova was a website offering BitTorrent downloads. Mininova was once one of the largest sites offering torrents of copyrighted material, but in November 2009, following legal action in the Dutch courts, the site operators deleted all torrent files uploaded by regular users including torrents that enabled users to download copyrighted material.
Flixster was an American social-networking movie website for discovering new movies, learning about movies, and meeting others with similar tastes in movies. It is currently owned by Fandango Media. The formerly independent site, allowed users to view movie trailers as well as learn about new and upcoming movies at the box office. It was originally based in San Francisco and was founded by Joe Greenstein and Saran Chari on January 20, 2006. It was also the former parent company of Rotten Tomatoes from January 2010 to February 17, 2016. On February 17, 2016, Flixster, including Rotten Tomatoes, was acquired by Fandango.
Wikivoyage is a free web-based travel guide for travel destinations and travel topics written by volunteer authors. It is a sister project of Wikipedia and supported and hosted by the same non-profit Wikimedia Foundation (WMF). Wikivoyage has been called the "Wikipedia of travel guides".
YouTube is an American online video-sharing platform headquartered in San Bruno, California, founded by three former PayPal employees—Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim—in February 2005. Google bought the site in November 2006 for US$1.65 billion, since which it operates as one of Google's subsidiaries.
RedTube is a pornographic video-sharing site, which in September 2009 held an Alexa ranking within the world's top 100 sites. It is one of several pornographic websites owned by Aylo. In June 2010 it had fallen out of the top 100, but it made a return in mid-2012. As of mid September 2020 its Alexa ranking was 520. Its popularity has been ascribed to its non-sexual name, which is a reference to the non-pornographic video sharing website YouTube. The website is based in Houston, Texas, and has servers in San Francisco, New Orleans and Montreal.
The Internet in Ukraine is well developed and steadily growing.
VK is a Russian online social media and social networking service based in Saint Petersburg. VK is available in multiple languages but it is predominantly used by Russian speakers. VK users can message each other publicly or privately, edit these messages, create groups, public pages, and events; share and tag images, audio, and video; and play browser-based games.
Torrentz was a Finland-based metasearch engine for BitTorrent, run by an individual known as Flippy and founded on 24 July 2003. It indexed torrents from various major torrent websites and offered compilations of various trackers per torrent that were not necessarily present in the default .torrent file, so that when a tracker was down, other trackers could do the work. It was the second most popular torrent website in 2012.
This is a partial, non-exhaustive list of notable online dating websites and mobile apps.
Brazzers is a Canadian pornographic video production and distributing company headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, and legal domicile in Nicosia, Cyprus. With an online network consisting of thirty-one hardcore pornography websites, the company's slogan is "World's Best HD Porn Site!" and features paid subscription-based content.
The Wayback Machine is a digital archive of the World Wide Web founded by the Internet Archive, an American nonprofit organization based in San Francisco, California. Created in 1996 and launched to the public in 2001, it allows users to go "back in time" to see how websites looked in the past. Its founders, Brewster Kahle and Bruce Gilliat, developed the Wayback Machine to provide "universal access to all knowledge" by preserving archived copies of defunct web pages.