I thought I’d kick this blog out of the dust once to point out that the number of social networking websites has increased pretty steadily since March of this year. It might be interesting to do some kind of comparison of them… which I’ve started over at my page on Multiply, a SN with a stunningly bad UI but which I find somewhat compelling.
Multiply got fragged pretty badly on the blog circuit about its “spamport” function, which allows you to import your contact lists from Orkut and Friendster… which really means that it sent the contacts an email suggesting (in your name) they join Multiply. As much as I agree that’s bad (although I did it myself, with a disclaimer, and only to certain friends) I think the idea of trying to associate or link the SNs is a great one. More and more SNs want that next 1% of the user share, and they’re doing nothing more than fragmenting everyone further. All that effort could go toward fooling with the APIs of the SNs (if they exist) or scraping them/working around them (like with Gmail).
So, two short, to-be-revised reviews in the extended entry and we’ll call it a day.
ORKUT
Pros:
* Cool UI
* Big and potentially fast
* Export facility (CSV)
* Promise of integration with Gmail and other Google services post-beta
Cons:
* Slow
* Fragmented discussion groups
* Draconian privacy policy
* Not very responsive to suggestions
* No FOAF support
* No RSS support
TRIBE
Pros:
* Open web pages to non-members
* Outbound RSS for each discussion group
* Operators appear in discussion groups and react to suggestions
* Friendly, casual atmosphere
* One year +
* Good privacy controls and adult content switches
* Fast
Cons:
* UI is crammed full
* Low proportion of non-US members
* No import facilities I’m aware of
* No inbound RSS from other sites
* No FOAF support
* Discussion groups fragmented
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