This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page . (Learn how and when to remove these messages)
|
Type of business | Joint venture, corporation |
---|---|
Type of site | Social networking, online forums |
Available in | English |
Founded | February 2003 Edmonton, Alberta |
Headquarters | Edmonton, Alberta Toronto, Ontario, Canada |
Area served | Western Canada [1] Main (2003-2012) Worldwide (2012-present) [2] |
Owner | Ideon Media |
Founder(s) | Timo Ewalds |
CEO | Kevin Bartus [3] |
Key people | Dave Stevens, Boris Wertz |
Employees | 10 as of 14 November 2008[ [4] [ref]] |
Parent | Ideon Media [2] |
URL | forums.nexopia.com (defunct) |
Registration | Required |
Users | 1.4 million users [5] 200,000 active as of 9 November 2012[ [6] [ref]] |
Launched | February 2003 [2] |
Current status | Closed |
Nexopia was a Canadian social networking website created in 2003, by Timo Ewalds. [7] It was designed for ages 14 and up, but was later lowered to 13. [8] Users were able to create and design profiles, a friends list, blogs, galleries, and compose articles and forums. Interaction was accomplished through an internal personal messaging system, public user comments on profiles, blogs or through threads and posts on the forums. In November 2012, Nexopia was acquired by digital ad network Ideon Media. [9]
Nexopia was founded in 2003, and became Canada's first online social network, albeit mostly serving Western Canada. [2] It evolved from the community site called Enternexus.com, another website built by Ewalds. The initial beta site was limited to 70 members and eventually led to Nexopia.com. When Enternexus.com relaunched as Nexopia.com, initial growth was said to be 100 users in four days, and 225,000 users within 22 months. [10] [ unreliable source? ] For a brief period during that time, Nexopia.com maintained growth of 10% or 3500 average new members per day. [11] [ unreliable source? ] In 2008, Nexopia announced 1.2 million active registered users and 1 billion page views per month as well as the investment of an undisclosed amount of the venture capital fund Burda Digital Ventures (now Acton Capital Partners). [12]
In October 2010, the site had just under 1.5 million users and nearly 35 billion hits. In January 2012, the site reported 1,636,990 users and 35,517,895,992 hits.
The website uses Interac Online, a service that allows account holders at participating banks to make payments through online banking.
In 2008 Nexopia updated its user profile pages, the largest revision since the site's launch in 2003. The redesign included a streamlined layout, Ajax controls for messages, galleries and profile editing, new profile skinning options and image resizing. [13] The update caused controversy among users due to issues such as slow load times, disappearing profile pictures, undelivered private messages, forms not working correctly, and people upset because the site design was different. Nexopia staff polled users, and found that the majority disliked the new profile picture slider the most. Nexopia staff then provided the option to switch between the classic and new profile picture viewers. [14]
The forums were the main social aspect of the website. Nexopia 'Plus' subscribers could create their own forums, which could be open or available only to only invited members.[ citation needed ] In early 2016, the website changed to online forums. [15] The forum used software from XenForo, [16] replacing WordPress. [17]
Over 95% of users were Canadian, with over 1.4 million member accounts and a hit count of over 33 billion.[ citation needed ]
No content containing nudity, racism, violence, or gore was allowed on forums or profiles, although photos of a small amount of marijuana and the use of pipes and bongs was allowed; alcohol was also acceptable. All profile pictures were checked by photo moderators before appearing on a user page. Photos on a user's profile were not checked, but a "report abuse" button allowed another user to report abuses. Nexopia prohibited copyright infringement.
In March 2007, four students from the Elk Island school district in Sherwood Park, Alberta were expelled from school and twenty were given suspensions in a case of cyberbullying. [18] Students used Nexopia to create teacher profiles in which classmates posted defamatory, nonsensical, derogatory and libellous information on the teachers' pages. [18]
Nexopia was criticized [19] by parent groups, who blamed their children's problems on the website and tried to have it shut down. This forced the site to become more strict about user posts.
Nexopia became a target for online predators. [1] [20] [21] Since a user's profile could be completely open to the public, profile images and information were viewable. Users could post personal information such as their address, telephone number, family members, relationship status and school.
Online spam increased such as through "dummy" accounts that spam users, linking them to websites containing porn or malicious information.[ citation needed ] Users who did not follow the rules could get a simple ban from the website or have their account "frozen".[ citation needed ]
In March 2012, the website was found to be in violation of federal privacy laws by keeping personal information indefinitely. [22] As of November 2012, Nexopia was working with the Privacy Commissioner to ensure regulatory compliance. [9]
The site was used by convicted serial killer Cody Legebokoff, who met one victim, fifteen year old Loren Leslie, there. [23]
Users with free accounts had access to standard features, such as forum posting, private messaging, user profiles with comments, photo uploading, a user blog and an image gallery. Monthly paid subscriptions were offered at $5 to fee gain access to extra features such as advanced user search, forum creation, increased media gallery capacity and online file storage, and the removal of ads.
An online community, also called an internet community or web community, is a community whose members interact with each other primarily via the Internet. Members of the community usually share common interests. For many, online communities may feel like home, consisting of a "family of invisible friends". Additionally, these "friends" can be connected through gaming communities and gaming companies. Those who wish to be a part of an online community usually have to become a member via a specific site and just to specific content or links.
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 and has also introduced their own ad portal named LinkedIn Ads to let company's advertise in their platform. LinkedIn has more than 1 billion registered members from over 200 countries and territories.
Internet privacy involves the right or mandate of personal privacy concerning the storage, re-purposing, provision to third parties, and display of information pertaining to oneself via the 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.
Photobucket is an image hosting and video hosting website, web services suite, and online community based in Denver, Colorado, United States. Photobucket once hosted more than 10 billion images from 100 million registered members. Links from personal Photobucket accounts were often used for avatars displayed on Internet forums, storage of videos, embedding on blogs, and distribution in social networks. Images hosted on Photobucket were frequently linked to online businesses, online auctions, and classified advertisement websites like eBay and Craigslist.
A social networking service (SNS), or social networking site, is a type of online social media platform which people use to build social networks or social relationships with other people who share similar personal or career content, interests, activities, backgrounds or real-life connections.
Social media are interactive technologies that facilitate the creation, sharing and aggregation of content amongst virtual communities and networks. Common features include:
Internet safety, also known as online safety, cyber safety and electronic safety (e-safety), refers to the policies, practices and processes that reduce the harms to people that are enabled by the (mis)use of information technology.
The Renren Network, formerly known as the Xiaonei Network, was a Chinese social networking service similar to Facebook. It was popular among college students. Renren Inc. had its headquarters in Chaoyang District, Beijing, with additional offices in Shanghai and Guangzhou. Renren at one point had a $740m initial public offering (IPO) on the New York Stock Exchange in April 2011.
Social media marketing is the use of social media platforms and websites to promote a product or service. Although the terms e-marketing and digital marketing are still dominant in academia, social media marketing is becoming more popular for both practitioners and researchers.
Men and women use social network services (SNSs) differently and with different frequencies. In general, several researchers have found that women tend to use SNSs more than men and for different and more social purposes.
ScuttlePad was a social network launched in August 2010 for children aged 6–11 years old. Users can add friends, upload photos and update statuses through pre-defined word lists. It is a self-funded venture established in Utah.
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.
Cyberbullying is a form of bullying or harassment using electronic means. Since the 2000s, it has become increasingly common, especially among teenagers and adolescents, due to young people's increased use of social media. Related issues include online harassment and trolling. In 2015, according to cyberbullying statistics from the i–Safe Foundation, over half of adolescents and teens had been bullied online, and about the same number had engaged in cyberbullying. Both the bully and the victim are negatively affected, and the intensity, duration, and frequency of bullying are three aspects that increase the negative effects on both of them.
Social spam is unwanted spam content appearing on social networking services, social bookmarking sites, and any website with user-generated content. It can be manifested in many ways, including bulk messages, profanity, insults, hate speech, malicious links, fraudulent reviews, fake friends, and personally identifiable information.
A user profile is a collection of settings and information associated with a user. It contains critical information that is used to identify an individual, such as their name, age, portrait photograph and individual characteristics such as knowledge or expertise. User profiles are most commonly present on social media websites such as Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn; and serve as voluntary digital identity of an individual, highlighting their key features and traits. In personal computing and operating systems, user profiles serve to categorise files, settings, and documents by individual user environments, known as ‘accounts’, allowing the operating system to be more friendly and catered to the user. Physical user profiles serve as identity documents such as passports, driving licenses and legal documents that are used to identify an individual under the legal system.
Everloop was an online social media site specifically made for children ages 8–13.
ASKfm was a Latvian question and answer network launched in June 2010 as a competitor to Formspring. After registration, the user filled out their profile and could ask questions, reply on their profile, create photo polls. Also from 2021, app users could communicate anonymously or openly in public chats or tête-à-tête in private chats. The platform had 300 million registered users as of November 2021.
Anonymous social media is a subcategory of social media wherein the main social function is to share and interact around content and information anonymously on mobile and web-based platforms. Another key aspect of anonymous social media is that content or information posted is not connected with particular online identities or profiles.
The advent of social networking services has led to many issues spanning from misinformation and disinformation to privacy concerns related to public and private personal data.
Meta Platforms Inc., or Meta for short, has faced a number of privacy concerns. These stem partly from the company's revenue model that involves selling information collected about its users for many things including advertisement targeting. Meta Platforms Inc. has also been a part of many data breaches that have occurred within the company. These issues and others are further described including user data concerns, vulnerabilities in the company's platform, investigations by pressure groups and government agencies, and even issues with students. In addition, employers and other organizations/individuals have been known to use Meta Platforms Inc. for their own purposes. As a result, individuals’ identities and private information have sometimes been compromised without their permission. In response to these growing privacy concerns, some pressure groups and government agencies have increasingly asserted the users’ right to privacy and to be able to control their personal data.
It's late Tuesday night and two teenage boys are comparing bongs in Nexopia's drugs forum.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link){{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link){{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)