BlackPlanet

Last updated
Blackplanet.com
Company typeSocial networking company
Founded1999 [1]
FounderBenjamin Sun
Omar Wasow
Headquarters
205 Hudson Street, 6th Floor
New York, New York
,
USA
Owner Urban One
Website blackplanet.com

BlackPlanet is an African-American social networking service for matchmaking and job postings. The company website also contains forums for discussion on political and social issues. [2]

Contents

BlackPlanet was launched by internet analyst Omar Wasow on September 1, 2001. Wasow had previously created a pre-web community dubbed New York Online in 1993 [2] with Community Connect's CEO Benjamin Sun.

Company

The website is run by Community Connect of New York City, which alongside also runs AsianAvenue.com and MiGente.com [2] In April 2008, Community Connect and its websites were purchased for $38 million by Radio One, a Lanham based media started by Cathy Hughes. [3]

BlackPlanet states its broader mission is to strengthen the Black community. [2]

Website

The most popular forums were Current Events, Heritage & Identity, Relationships, Religion & Spirituality, and Women. [4] According to Omar Wasow, BlackPlanet's home-grown software allows users to move between personal pages, to dating, chat, and message boards, focusing on connecting people, rather than feeding them content. [2]

Statistics

In January 2007, the membership log on BlackPlanet's home-page boasted 15.8 million registered users since its inception in 1999. [4] At time of purchase the site had around 20 million members and was the fourth most-visited U.S. social networking site. [5]

Target Audience [6]
DemographicShare
Male34.4%
Female65.6%
Median Age32
Attended/Grad College64.5%
Composition Black88%

"BlackPlanet creates branded profile pages to integrate advertisers into the social community, enabling members to engage as friends"; as well as personal profiles BlackPlanet also allows pages for brands, personalities, and products. [6]

In 2009, BlackPlanet introduced new features to the website, including a Facebook-style status update, and a news bar that keeps users up-to-date with information shared on Interactive One and BlackPlanet. The chat function was also updated in 2009; the current[ timeframe? ] chat is powered by a company called Chat Blazer and is Flash based. [7]

In early 2010, BlackPlanet launched a new homepage that included an Activity Feed, allowing users to see updates from everyone on BlackPlanet, either friends or by location. [8]

Other features

Farmandia.jpg

BlackPlanet has recently[ timeframe? ] introduced two interactive games for users, Farmandia and Fishdom.

The similarities to Facebook's Farmville have not gone unnoticed by the BlackPlanet users, who point out the need for improvement of the site's infrastructure and principal features such as chat prior to the introduction of games. [9]

Mobile applications

BlackPlanet also introduced mobile apps in 2009 for mobile phones. The application BlackPlanetMobile was free when it was introduced but was not exclusive of mobile provider charges. [7] BlackPlanetMobile did not work on the BlackBerry, GPhone, iPhone, or Sidekick smartphones when introduced. [7]

BlackPlanet Text Alerts are also available to alert users to updates and notifications. This is an opt-in service. [7]

Social networks

It has been stated that online social networks have come to define the modern Internet experience. [10]

Wasow stated: [10]

The guys who started Myspace were quoted in Business Week magazine saying that they looked at BlackPlanet as a model for Myspace and thought there was an opportunity to do a general market version of what BlackPlanet was.

As of June 2007, BlackPlanet had 16.5 million members and 80 million page views. It was described as the largest online media entity for African-Americans and "the granddaddy of social-networking sites". [11] BlackPlanet enjoyed more than 6 million unique visitors a month in April 2008. In 2007, BlackPlanet found itself to be the fourth most popular social networking tool on the internet, but with the vast increase in Facebook, Twitter and MySpace usage, BlackPlanet fails to gain recognition in the top 15 social networks according to eBizMBA, in March 2011, leading critics to suggest that 'BlackPlanet has fallen to the wayside as other networks have taken the social network mantle.' [10]

BlackPlanet utilises other social networking tools such as Twitter and Facebook in order to reach new and potential users. Its Twitter feed is updated on a near daily basis, commenting and highlighting points of interest to the black community. [12] The BlackPlanet Twitter feed is also used to post announcements and updates regarding the BlackPlanet site itself. Wider political issues are also mentioned, including: "What will you do #ifgovernmentshutsdown?" [12] [ improper synthesis? ]

The BlackPlanet Facebook page is used to encourage discussion of issues both directly and indirectly applicable to its community of African-American users. The Facebook status update feature is used to ask questions to the page followers, and is well responded to in general. [13] [ improper synthesis? ]

Both social networking tools are used to advertise the "Member of the Day" feature, drawing attention to the appearance of the chosen member. [12] [ improper synthesis? ]

Ethics

Wasow says he occasionally gets questions about whether BlackPlanet is fostering racial separatism. "Voluntarily socializing with people who share your interests is what freedom is all about," he says. "Anybody can join any of the sites. We found we were not segregating the web." [2]

However, niche community tools such as BlackPlanet do host users who wish to promote separatism, such as gangs, and this has not gone unnoticed. Finding gangs on GeoCities, BlackPlanet, and especially Myspace, along with other internet service providers (ISPs), provided the foundation of what today is known as gang internet investigation, a specialized area of expertise in gang investigation. [14]

Gary Dauphin, an original employee of BlackPlanet, argues that while the ethnicity of the site's owners is important to understanding the site, owners of one ethnicity can sometimes serve an audience of another ethnicity. "BlackPlanet, where I got my start on the Web, was owned for most of its early life by a largely Asian American group, and I would venture that that period was the site's finest hour. The ownership wasn't African-American, but it did understand the underlying call to service implied in running an ethnic site, and moreover, they had high ambitions for their company as a Web community platform provider that raised the bar for BP overall." [15]

Lawsuit

In October 2011, an anonymous model filed a federal lawsuit against BlackPlanet.com regarding a 2007 incident in which she was drugged and raped by two men who met the woman through the website. The two men (40-year-old Lavont Flanders, Jr. and 45-year-old Emerson Callum) were convicted by a federal jury in Miami in December 2011 of multiple sex-related and conspiracy charges and were sentenced to life in prison. [16] [17] The woman alleges that BlackPlanet.com "failed to warn women about the dangers of sexual predators". The site's parent company told the Miami Herald it "vehemently" denies the allegations. [18] [19]

In the press

In 2007, BlackPlanet was featured in the press when the U.S. Department of Defense or the Pentagon [ which? ] banned it amongst other sites in order to free up bandwidth, suggesting high usage levels. Other banned sites included: filecabi.com, Hi5, iFilm, Metacafe, MTV.com, Myspace, Pandora Radio, Photobucket, StupidVideos, and YouTube. [20] The Defense network contains more than 15,000 local and regional networks and more than five million computers in the grid.[ citation needed ]

BlackPlanet gained considerable publicity when Senator Barack Obama began using the site on October 5, 2007, during his presidential campaign bid. Within 10 days, he had gained nearly 200,000 friends. In an online poll conducted by the site, over 2/3 of BlackPlanet's online community stated their intention to vote in the 2008 election. [21] The media perceived this participation in a niche social networking tool to be a "smart move" by the Senator.[ citation needed ] On March 30, 2011, President Obama had 450,579 friends on BlackPlanet. The page continues to be updated with regular blog posts, but does not feature recent status updates.[ citation needed ]

BlackPlanet Rising

BPRlogo.png

BlackPlanet Rising is a BlackPlanet users community project set up by the website to encourage community support and services by its members. As part of their mission they aim to motivate and involve individuals to participate in civic engagement. [22] BlackPlanet Rising hosts a blog which contains posts from BlackPlanet users. Featured authors are highlighted along with their contributions to the site.[ citation needed ]

Donations

BlackPlanet Rising works with a charitable organization called DonorsChoose, which connects users to offer donations of critical resources, such as books, supplies, computers, field trips and guest speakers to public schools. The choice of donations and projects to support is available through BlackPlanet Rising and DonorsChoose. "Double Your Impact" support programs involve BlackPlanet Rising's matching user donations.

BlackPlanet Rising's Giving page via DonorsChoose had reached $11,023 donated by 36 donors, reaching 5,190 students in April 2011. [23]

Events

Past events organised by BlackPlanet Rising include fundraisers for earthquake and tsunami relief projects, volunteer drives for causes such as homelessness, and the launch of TelAfric at the Houston Museum of African American Culture, March 2011.[ citation needed ]

Volunteers

BlackPlanet Rising's VolunteerMatch site matches user's locations with volunteer opportunities in their area. They quote Barack Obama's election as President as a call for users to "bring a new energy and agenda to our country". [24]

Volunteer opportunities include educational programs, health programs, social rights programs and other opportunities to support one's community.

Riser of the Month

The BlackPlanet Rising community campaign has identified a "Riser of the Month" since September 2010. These are often political and social advocates, and community activists who support the African-American community. The website contains a feature article on the individual chosen each month. [25] Risers of the Month include:

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Instant messaging</span> Form of communication over the internet

Instant messaging (IM) technology is a type of online chat allowing immediate transmission of messages 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.

The social web is a set of social relations that link people through the World Wide Web. The social web encompasses how websites and software are designed and developed in order to support and foster social interaction. These online social interactions form the basis of much online activity including online shopping, education, gaming and social networking services. The social aspect of Web 2.0 communication has been to facilitate interaction between people with similar tastes. These tastes vary depending on who the target audience is, and what they are looking for. For individuals working in the public relation department, the job is consistently changing and the impact is coming from the social web. The influence held by the social network is large and ever changing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Myspace</span> Social networking website

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 the successes of Zynga, RockYou and Photobucket, among others. From 2005 to 2009, Myspace was the largest social networking site in the world.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Social networking service</span> Online platform that facilitates the building of relations

A social networking service or SNS 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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Meebo</span> Instant messaging client

Meebo was an instant messaging and social networking service provider. It was founded in September 2005 by Sandy Jen, Seth Sternberg, and Elaine Wherry, and was based in Mountain View, California. Initially the company offered a web-based instant messenger service, extending its offer in more general online chat and even social networking directions. In June 2012, Google acquired Meebo to merge the company's staff with the Google+ developers team.

MiGente.com was an online social-networking site specifically targeting the Hispanic community. It was launched in 2000. Its former parent company, Community Connect Inc., claimed that MiGente.com was the fastest growing English language site for the Hispanic community with over 3 million registered members. Members come from a variety of Hispanic backgrounds.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mobile social network</span> Social networking on mobile devices

Mobile social networking is social networking where individuals with similar interests converse and connect with one another through their mobile phone and/or tablet. Much like web-based social networking, mobile social networking occurs in virtual communities.

Flixster was 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.

Keek was a free online social networking service that allowed its users to upload video status updates, which were called "keeks". Users could post keeks to the Keek website using a webcam or via the Keek mobile apps for iPhone, Windows Phone, BlackBerry, or Android. Users could also reply back with text or video comments, known as "keekbacks", and share content to other major social media networks. There was also an embed option so users could embed their keeks into a blog or website.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tagged (website)</span> Social discovery website

Tagged is a social discovery website based in San Francisco, California, founded in 2004. It allows members to browse the profiles of any other members, and share tags and virtual gifts. Tagged claims it has 300 million members as of 2014. As of September 2011, Quantcast estimates Tagged monthly unique users at 5.9 million in the United States, and 18.6 million globally. Michael Arrington wrote in April 2011 that Tagged is most notable for the ability to grow profitably during the era of Facebook.

Badoo is a dating-focused social network founded by Russian entrepreneur Andrey Andreev in 2006. It is headquartered in Limassol, Cyprus and London, United Kingdom, with offices in Malta, Russia and the United States. It operates in 190 countries and is available in 47 languages, making it the world's most widely used dating network. The app is available on iOS, Android, and the web. Badoo operates on a freemium model, whereby the core services can be used without payment.

Google Friend Connect was a free social networking site, active from 2008 to 2012. Similar to Facebook Platform and MySpaceID, it allowed users to build a profile to share and update information through messaging, photographs and video content via third-party sites which acted as a host for profile sharing and social exchanges.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bebo</span> American social networking website

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Social media marketing</span> Promotion of products or services on social media

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.

Werkenntwen, often abbreviated in German as wkw, was a German social networking site. TechCrunch once compared it to Myspace. According to Alexa Internet in July 2011, werkenntwen's traffic was ranked 959 worldwide and was one of the most successful websites in Germany. The site allowed users to write blogs, chat with friends, and write in their guestbook.

Gowalla is a location-based social networking service. It originally launched in 2007 and closed in 2012, but was relaunched on March 10, 2023. Users are able to check in at "Spots" in their local vicinity, either through a dedicated mobile application or through the mobile website. Checking-in will sometimes produce virtual "items" for the user, some of which are developed to be promotional tools for the game's partners. As of November 2010 there were approximately 600,000 users. In January 2021, Gowalla made an announcement that the app is coming back in 2022.

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.

Woo Media was an online chat and video social network which offered a variety of interactive sites that provided live social entertainment through a computer or mobile device. The company raised $17 million in venture capital from several investors including Index Ventures, Atomico, Mangrove Capital Partners, and Klaus Hommels. One analyst valued Woo Media at $41 million at the time it was funded. Online dating company Zoosk purchased Woo Media in November 2011. Zoosk purchased Woo Media for its properties’ commercial traction and for access to its 10 million active users.

Yookos is an online social networking service founded in 2011 by the leader of Christ Embassy International. It was initially used by church members, but later the site was expanded to allow public access. The site received more than half of its traffic from Nigeria and the remaining user base was from Zimbabwe, South Africa, the UK and the US.

Comparison of user features of messaging platforms refers to a comparison of all the various user features of various electronic instant messaging platforms. This includes a wide variety of resources; it includes standalone apps, platforms within websites, computer software, and various internal functions available on specific devices, such as iMessage for iPhones.

References

  1. ↑ "Blackplanet.com". Archived from the original on October 11, 1999. Retrieved March 31, 2011.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Corcoran, Cate R. (2004-04-01), "BlackPlanet's Universe" (PDF), Stanford Magazine, retrieved 2011-04-19
  3. ↑ "BlackPlanet", App Appeal, retrieved 2011-04-19
  4. 1 2 Byrne, D. N. (2008), "Public Discourse, Community concerns and Civic Engagement: Exploring Black Social Networking Traditions on BlackPlanet.com", Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13: 319–340, doi: 10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007.00398.x
  5. ↑ Frommer, D. (2008-04-11), "BlackPlanet Parent Community connect Sells to Radio One for $38 million", Business Insider, retrieved 2011-04-19
  6. 1 2 Interactive One, BlackPlanet, archived from the original on 2011-05-18, retrieved 2011-04-19
  7. 1 2 3 4 BW 2.0 (2009-03-19), "BlackPlanet gets an upgrade, Introduces Status Updates", Black Web 2.0, archived from the original on 2011-08-10, retrieved 2011-04-19{{citation}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  8. ↑ New BlackPlanet Homepage is Live!, 2010-12-01, retrieved 2011-04-19
  9. ↑ 2 New Games Released on BlackPlanet, 2010-03-23, retrieved 2011-04-19
  10. 1 2 3 "BlackPlanet's founder talks MySpace, why he was sceptical of Twitter, and if Facebook may have peaked", Complex, 2011-03-23, retrieved 2011-04-19
  11. ↑ Brennan, Peter J. (2008-04-11), "Radio One buys Social Networking Firm", The Washington Post, retrieved 2011-04-19
  12. 1 2 3 BlackPlanet on Twitter , retrieved 2011-04-19
  13. ↑ BlackPlanet , retrieved 2011-04-19
  14. ↑ "Gang Activity on Facebook: Should We Look the Other Way", Media Newswire, retrieved 2011-04-19
  15. ↑ Prince, R. (2011-03-08), "On the Internet, does anyone know whether you're black or Latino", Poynter, archived from the original on 2011-04-19, retrieved 2011-04-19
  16. ↑ "2 convicted in Fla. Of filming rapes for porn | ajc.com". Archived from the original on 2012-01-07. Retrieved 2011-12-10.
  17. ↑ "2 get life for drugging, raping women in Miramar warehouse for porn". Palm Beach Post. Archived from the original on 20 June 2016.
  18. ↑ Munzenrieder, Kyle (25 October 2011). "Model Files Suit Against BlackPlanet.com, Men Who Allegedly Drugged and Raped Her". Miami New Times.
  19. ↑ "Chicago - Chicago : News : Politics : Things To Do : Sports". Chicago Sun-Times. Archived from the original on 2011-12-04. Retrieved 2011-12-10.
  20. ↑ "KWTW website", KWTW, archived from the original on 2004-11-02, retrieved 2011-04-19
  21. ↑ Jose Antonio Vargas (2007-10-16), "Obama Networkd on BlackPlanet.com", Washington Post, retrieved 2011-04-19
  22. ↑ BlackPlanet Rising - Mission , retrieved 2011-04-19
  23. ↑ BlackPlanet Rising, Donate
  24. ↑ BlackPlanet Rising, BlackPlanet Rising VolunteerMatch
  25. ↑ BlackPlanet Rising, Risers of the Month
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.