TELEGRAPH -- Apr 10 -- Friendster was the first big hit. But when
your mom gets her own Friendster profile, you know it's time to move
on. Enter Myspace, Habbohotel, Linkedin, Jewster, Orkut and Tickle. Danah Boyd,
a UC Berkeley doctoral candidate (online communities) says such sites
connected her to like-minded people when she was an isolated
teen. Judith Meskill, editor of the Social Software Weblogrecently met someone she had been corresponding with online. "I showed
up and, plop, in the middle of the grassy knoll was a guy sitting in a
wheelchair and flailing like he had no motor control. He was wearing a
football helmet, with a bent straw that he would use to punch out words
on a Ouija-board-size keyboard. He was laughing; it was amazing. We
were both laughing. I never knew it (from chatting with him
online)." Says Tickle.com CEO James Currier:
"People are reaching out for richer interaction. In your real life, you
probably only interact with 100 people. On the Internet, you find ones
most like you and that have same interests as you." Flickr.com combines blogging, social networking and photo sharing. On Last.fm,
users create a profile with a list of songs, and the Web site connects
users with similar musical tastes. "Of course it's addictive," Boyd
says of these social Web sites. "It plays into human nature." FULL ARTICLE @ NASHUA TELEGRAPH

Mark Brooks: Flickr was just bought by Yahoo. Fotolog.net is a popular competitor.