Instant messaging (IM) technology is a type of online chat allowing real-time text transmission over the Internet or another computer network. Messages are typically transmitted between two or more parties, when each user inputs text and triggers a transmission to the recipient(s), who are all connected on a common network. It differs from email in that conversations over instant messaging happen in real-time. Most modern IM applications use push technology and also add other features such as emojis, file transfer, chatbots, voice over IP, or video chat capabilities.
Internet privacy involves the right or mandate of personal privacy concerning the storing, re-purposing, provision to third parties, and displaying of information pertaining to oneself via Internet. Internet privacy is a subset of data privacy. Privacy concerns have been articulated from the beginnings of large-scale computer sharing and especially relate to mass surveillance enabled by the emergence of computer technologies.
Myspace is a social networking service based in the United States. Launched on August 1, 2003, the site was the first social network to reach a global audience and had a significant influence on technology, pop culture and music. The site played a critical role in the early growth of companies like YouTube and created a developer platform that launched the successes of Zynga, RockYou and Photobucket, among others. From 2005 to 2009, Myspace was the largest social networking site in the world.
Image sharing, or photo sharing, is the publishing or transfer of digital photos online. Image sharing websites offer services such as uploading, hosting, managing and sharing of photos. This function is provided through both websites and applications that facilitate the upload and display of images. The term can also be loosely applied to the use of online photo galleries that are set up and managed by individual users, including photoblogs. Sharing means that other users can view but not necessarily download images, and users can select different copyright options for their images.
Web 2.0 refers to websites that emphasize user-generated content, ease of use, participatory culture and interoperability for end users.
Flixster is an American social-networking movie website for discovering new movies, learning about movies, and meeting others with similar tastes in movies, currently owned by parent company Fandango. The formerly independent site, allows 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, California 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.
hi5 is an American social networking service based in San Francisco, California. It is owned by The Meet Group.
Lorenz Bogaert, born 1976, is a Belgian serial Internet entrepreneur. He is co-founder of Massive Media, a social media company owning digital brands such as social networking services Netlog and Ablo and social dating community Twoo. Lorenz lives in Ghent.
Digg, stylized in lowercase as digg, is an American news aggregator with a curated front page, aiming to select stories specifically for the Internet audience such as science, trending political issues, and viral Internet issues. It was launched in its current form on July 31, 2012, with support for sharing content to other social platforms such as Twitter and Facebook.
Goodreads is an American social cataloging website and a subsidiary of Amazon that allows individuals to search its database of books, annotations, quotes, and reviews. Users can sign up and register books to generate library catalogs and reading lists. They can also create their own groups of book suggestions, surveys, polls, blogs, and discussions. The website's offices are located in San Francisco.
MyHeritage is an online genealogy platform with web, mobile, and software products and services, introduced by the Israeli company MyHeritage in 2003. Users of the platform can obtain their family trees, upload and browse through photos, and search through over 14 billion historical records, among other features.
Bebo was an American social networking website that originally operated from 2005 until its bankruptcy in 2013 and relaunched in February 2021. The site relaunched several times after its bankruptcy with a number of short-lived offerings, including instant messaging and video streaming, until its acquisition by Amazon in July 2019 when it was shut down. It was announced in January 2021 that it would be returning as a new social media site the month after. By May 2022, it had once again been shut down, without having ever left beta testing.
Meetic is a French online dating service founded in November 2001 and part of the Match Group since 2013.
Flipboard is a news aggregator and social network aggregation company based in Palo Alto, California, with offices in New York, Vancouver, and Bejiing. Its software, also known as Flipboard, was first released in July 2010. It aggregates content from social media, news feeds, photo sharing sites, and other websites, presents it in magazine format, and allows users to "flip" through the articles, images, and videos being shared. Readers can also save stories into Flipboard magazines. As of March 2016 the company claims there have been 28 million magazines created by users on Flipboard. The service can be accessed via web browser, or by a Flipboard application for Microsoft Windows and macOS, and via mobile apps for iOS and Android. The client software is available at no charge and is localized in 21 languages.
Since the arrival of early social networking sites in the early 2000s, online social networking platforms have expanded exponentially, with the biggest names in social media in the mid-2010s being Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat. The massive influx of personal information that has become available online and stored in the cloud has put user privacy at the forefront of discussion regarding the database's ability to safely store such personal information. The extent to which users and social media platform administrators can access user profiles has become a new topic of ethical consideration, and the legality, awareness, and boundaries of subsequent privacy violations are critical concerns in advance of the technological age.
Torch is a discontinued Chromium-based web browser and Internet suite developed by the North Carolina based Torch Media. As of November 2022, downloads for Torch are unavailable, and upon clicking the download button, users are redirected to the Torch Search extension on the Chrome Web Store.
Twoo or Twoo.com was a social discovery platform launched in 2011 by Massive Media. Users create profiles, upload pictures and chat with other users. The website and app is available in 38 languages and counted 181 million users in 200 countries in December 2016. Twoo announced that they will shut down on June 30, 2022, alerting users of this by way of pop-up notices when the users log in. Users were migrated to POF.
Spring.me was a social networking service. Until a rebranding in 2013, it was known as Formspring, a question-and-answer-based social network launched in 2009 by Ade Olonoh, the founder of online form builder Formstack.
Ablo was a social networking service for instant communications. It enabled users to communicate with people from anywhere in the world by having live one-to-one text and video conversations, using an automated translation feature.
