Semi-protected
Facebook, Inc.
Type Private
Founded Cambridge, Massachusetts
(February 4, 2004)
Headquarters Palo Alto, California
Dublin, Ireland (international headquarters for Europe, Africa, Middle East)
Key people Mark Zuckerberg, Founder and CEO
Dustin Moskovitz, Co-founder
Sheryl Sandberg, COO
Matt Cohler, VP of Product Management
Chris Hughes, Co-founder
Revenue ▲ 300 million USD (2008 est.)
Net income ▼ -50 million USD (2008 est.)
Employees 700 (November 2008)
Website facebook.com
Type of site Social network service
Advertising Banner ads
Registration Required
Available in Catalan, Chinese (simplified), Chinese (Hong Kong), Chinese (Taiwan), Czech, Danish, Dutch, English (American), English (British), Filipino, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Norwegian (bokmål), Polish, Portuguese (Brazilian), Romanian, Russian, Slovene, Spanish (Castilian), Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Welsh
Launched February 2004
Current status Active
Facebook is a social networking website launched on February 4, 2004. The free-access website is privately owned and operated by Facebook, Inc. Users can join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and region to connect and interact with other people. People can also add friends and send them messages, and update their personal profile to notify friends about themselves. The website's name refers to the paper facebooks depicting members of a campus community that some US colleges and preparatory schools give to incoming students, faculty, and staff as a way to get to know other people on campus.
Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook while he was a student at Harvard University. Website membership was initially limited to Harvard students, but was expanded to other colleges in the Ivy League. It later expanded further to include any university student, then high school students, and, finally, to anyone aged 13 and over. The website currently has more than 120 million active users worldwide.
Facebook has met with some controversy over the past few years. It has been blocked intermittently in several countries including Syria and Iran. It has also been banned at many places of work to increase productivity. Privacy has also been an issue, and it has been compromised several times. It is also facing several lawsuits from a number of Zuckerberg's former classmates, who claim that Facebook had stolen their source code and other intellectual property.
History
Mark Zuckerberg founded "The Facebook", originally located at thefacebook.com, on February 4, 2004 while attending Harvard University as a sophomore. The company dropped The from its name after purchasing the domain name facebook.com in 2005 for $200,000. Membership was initially restricted to students of Harvard College, and within the first month, more than half the undergraduate population at Harvard were registered on the service. Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes soon joined Zuckerberg to help promote the website. In March 2004, Facebook expanded to Stanford, Columbia, and Yale. This expansion continued when it opened to all Ivy League schools and gradually most universities in Canada and the United States. In June 2004, Facebook moved its base of operations to Palo Alto, California. In October 2008, Facebook announced that it was to set up its international headquarters in Dublin, Ireland
Facebook launched a high school version in September 2005; Zuckerberg called it the next logical step. High school networks required an invitation to join. Facebook later expanded membership eligibility to employees of several companies including Apple Inc. and Microsoft. Facebook was then opened to everyone with a valid e-mail address, aside from people under the age of 13, on September 26, 2006.
BusinessWeek has confirmed that Facebook, beginning in Autumn 2008, will allow its employees to sell stock at no more than a $3.75 billion valuation.
Funding
Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto, California
Facebook received its first investment of US$500,000 in June 2004 from PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel. This was followed a year later by $12.7 million in venture capital from Accel Partners, and then $27.5 million more from Greylock Partners. A cash flow statement was leaked, showing that during the 2005 fiscal year, Facebook had a net loss of $3.63 million. Microsoft approached Facebook in September 2007, proposing an investment in return for a 5% stake in the company. Microsoft would pay an estimated $300–500 million for the share. Microsoft announced on October 24, 2007 that it purchased a 1.6% share of Facebook for $246 million. On November 30, 2007, Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing invested $60 million in Facebook.
BusinessWeek reported on March 28, 2006 that a potential acquisition of the website was under negotiation. Facebook reportedly declined an offer of $750 million from an unknown bidder, and it was rumored the asking price rose as high as $2 billion. With the sale of social networking website MySpace to News Corp on July 19, 2005, rumors surfaced about the possible sale of Facebook to a larger media company. Zuckerberg had already said he did not want to sell the company and denied rumors to the contrary. In late September, serious talks between Facebook and Yahoo! took place concerning acquisition of the social network, with prices reaching as high as $1 billion. Thiel, by then a board member of Facebook, indicated that Facebook's internal valuation was around $8 billion based on their projected revenues of $1 billion by 2015, comparable to Viacom's MTV brand, a company with a shared target demographic audience. Other companies, including Google, expressed interest in September 2007 to buy a portion of Facebook. Amid the rumors, Zuckerberg claimed that selling Facebook was unlikely because he wanted to keep it independent, stating on July 17, 2007, "We're not really looking to sell the company. [...] We're not looking to IPO anytime soon. It's just not the core focus of the company."
Website
Facebook's new homepage features a login form on the top right for existing users and a registration form directly underneath for new visitors.
Facebook users can choose to join one or more networks, organized by city, workplace, school, and region. These networks help users connect with members of the same network. Users can also connect with friends, giving them access to their friends' profiles.
The website is free to users, but generates revenue from advertising, including banner ads. Users can create profiles including photos and lists of personal interests, exchange private or public messages, and join groups of friends. The viewing of detailed profile data is restricted to users from the same network or confirmed friends only when the appropriate Privacy settings have been altered. Without altering the Privacy settings a Facebook profile is viewable by anybody on Facebook.
Microsoft is Facebook's exclusive partner for serving banner advertising, and as such Facebook only serves advertisements that exist in Microsoft's advertisement inventory. According to comScore, an internet marketing research company, Facebook collects as much data from its visitors as Google and Microsoft but considerably less than Yahoo! when compared with other web companies.
Features
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The media often compares Facebook to MySpace, but one significant difference between the two websites is the level of customization.[39] MySpace allows users to decorate their profiles using HTML and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), while Facebook only allows plain text.
Facebook has a number of features for users to interact with. They include the Wall, a space on every user's profile page that allows friends to post messages for the user to see, Pokes, which allows users to send a virtual "poke" to each other (a notification that tells a user that they have been poked), Photos, where users can upload albums and photos, and Status, which allows users to inform their friends of their whereabouts and actions. A user's Wall is visible to anyone who is able to see that user's profile, which depends on their privacy settings. In July 2007, Facebook began allowing users to post attachments to the Wall, whereas the Wall was previously limited to textual content only.
Over time, Facebook has added several new features to its website. On September 6, 2006, a News Feed was announced, which appears on every user's homepage and highlights information including profile changes, upcoming events, and birthdays related to the user's friends. Initially, the News Feed caused dissatisfaction among Facebook users; some complained it was too cluttered and full of undesired information, while others were concerned it made it too easy for other people to track down individual activities (such as changes in relationship status, events, and conversations with other users). In response to this dissatisfaction, Zuckerberg issued an apology for the site's failure to include appropriate customizable privacy features. Since then, users have been able to control what types of information are shared automatically with friends. Users are now able to prevent friends from seeing updates about different types of activities, including profile changes, Wall posts, and newly added friends.
One of the most popular applications on Facebook is the Photos application, where users can upload albums and photos. Facebook allows users to upload an unlimited number of photos, compared with other image hosting services such as Photobucket and Flickr, which apply limits to the number of photos that a user is allowed to upload. However, users are limited to 60 photos per album. Privacy settings can be set for individual albums, limiting the groups of users that can see an album. For example, the privacy of an album can be set so that only the user's friends can see the album, while the privacy of another album can be set so that all Facebook users can see it. Another feature of the Photos applications is the ability to "tag", or label users in a photo. For instance, if a photo contains a user's friend, then the user can tag the friend in the photo. This sends a notification to the friend that they have been tagged, and provides them a link to see the photo.
Facebook Notes was introduced on August 22, 2006, a blogging feature that allowed tags and embeddable images. Users were later able to import blogs from Xanga, LiveJournal, Blogger, and other blogging services. During the week of April 7, 2008, Facebook released a Comet-based instant messaging application called "Chat" to several networks, which allows users to communicate with friends and is similar in functionality to desktop-based instant messengers.
Facebook launched Gifts on February 8, 2007, which allows users to send virtual gifts to their friends that appear on the recipient's profile. Gifts cost $1.00 each to purchase, and a personalized message can be attached to each gift. On May 14, 2007, Facebook launched Marketplace, which lets users post free classified ads. Marketplace has been compared to Craigslist by CNET, which points out that the major difference between the two is that listings posted by a user on Marketplace are only seen by users that are in the same network as that user, whereas listings posted on Craigslist can be seen by anyone.
On July 20, 2008, Facebook introduced "Facebook Beta", a significant redesign of its user interface on selected networks. The Mini-Feed and Wall were consolidated, profiles were separated into tabbed sections, and an effort was made to create a "cleaner" look. After initially giving users a choice to switch, Facebook began migrating all users to the new version beginning September, 2008.
Platform
Facebook launched the Facebook Platform on May 24, 2007, providing a framework for software developers to create applications that interact with core Facebook features. A markup language called Facebook markup language was introduced simultaneously; it is used to customize the "look and feel" of applications that developers create. Using the Platform, Facebook launched several new applications, including Gifts, allowing users to send virtual gifts to each other, Marketplace, allowing users to post free classified ads, Events, giving users a method of informing their friends about upcoming events, and Video, letting users share homemade videos with one another.
Applications that have been created on the Platform include chess and Scrabble, which both allow users to play games with their friends. These games are asynchronous, meaning that a user's moves are saved on the website, allowing the next move to be made at any time rather than immediately after the previous move.
By November 3, 2007, seven thousand applications had been developed on the Facebook Platform, with another hundred created everyday. By the second annual f8 developers conference on July 23, 2008, the number of applications had grown to 33,000, and the number of registered developers had exceeded 400,000.
Within a few months of launching the Facebook Platform, issues arose regarding "application spam", which involves Facebook applications "spamming" users to request it be installed. Application spam has been considered one of the possible causes to the drop in visitors to Facebook starting from the beginning of 2008, when its growth had fallen from December 2007 to January 2008, its first drop since its launch in 2004.
Reception and popularity
According to comScore, Facebook is the leading social networking site based on monthly unique visitors, having overtaken main competitor MySpace in April 2008. ComScore reports that Facebook attracted 132.1 million unique visitors in June 2008, compared to MySpace, which attracted 117.6 million.
According to Alexa, the website's ranking among all websites increased from 60th to 7th in terms of worldwide traffic, from September 2006 to September 2007, and is currently 5th. Quantcast ranks the website 15th in US in terms of traffic, and Compete.com ranks it 14th in US. The website is the most popular for uploading photos, with 14 million uploaded daily.
Facebook is the most popular social networking site in several English-speaking countries, including Canada and the United Kingdom. However, in the United States, it has only 36 million users compared to MySpace's 73 million. The website has won awards such as placement into the "Top 100 Classic Websites" by PC Magazine in 2007, and winning the "People's Voice Award" from the Webby Awards in 2008. In a 2006 study conducted by Student Monitor, a New Jersey-based company specializing in research concerning the college student market, Facebook was named the second most popular thing among undergraduates, tied with beer and only ranked lower than the iPod.
Potential future film
Sony Pictures, and The West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin, have confirmed they are in the process of developing a movie "about the founders of social networking site Facebook." Sorkin has set up his own account on the site, stating, "I honestly don't know how this works, which is why I'm here." The film so far, is untitled, and will be produced by Scott Rudin. According to the Telegraph, the film is expected to focus on Zuckerberg, and 2,500 Facebook users have joined the movies group associated with Sorkin's film, suggesting "plot pointers, offering to help or even asking for a role in the film." Sony was quick to refute suggestions that the film is a hoax (especially after musings that it might be a fake Sorkin account of which there are a number already) , with Steve Elzer saying, "We are developing the film that has been reported". However, a spokesperson for Facebook said that, "We are routinely approached by writers and filmmakers interested in telling the Facebook story... At this point, we have not agreed to cooperate with any film project, but we are flattered by the interest."
Controversy
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Facebook has met with some controversy over the past few years. In October 2005, the University of New Mexico blocked access to Facebook from its campus computers and networks. It cited a violation of the university's Acceptable Use Policy for abusing computer resources as the reason, stating the website forces use of the university's credentials for activity not related to the university. The school later unblocked Facebook after the website rectified the situation by displaying a notice on the login page stating the credentials used on the website are separate from the ones used for their school accounts.[86] The Ontario government also blocked access to Facebook for its employees in May 2007, stating the website was "not directly related to the workplace".
A notable ancillary effect of social networking websites like Facebook is the ability for participants to mourn publicly for a deceased individual. On January 1, 2008, a memorial group on Facebook posted the identity of murdered Toronto teenager Stefanie Rengel, whose family had not yet given the Toronto Police Service their consent to release her name to the media, as well as the identities of her accused killers — despite the fact that under Canada's Youth Criminal Justice Act, it is illegal to publish the name of an underage criminal. While police and Facebook staff attempted to comply with the privacy regulations by deleting posts mentioning her name, they noted it was difficult to effectively police individual users who repeatedly republished the deleted information.
Due to the open nature of Facebook, several countries have banned access to it including Syria and Iran. The Syrian government cited the ban was on the premise that the website promoted attacks on authorities. The government also feared Israeli infiltration of Syrian social networks on Facebook. Facebook was also used by Syrian citizens to criticize the government, and public criticism of the Syrian government is punishable by imprisonment. In Iran, the website was banned because of fears that opposition movements were being organized on the website.
Beacon
Facebook announced Facebook Beacon on November 7, 2007, a marketing initiative that allows websites to publish a user's activities to their Facebook profile as "Social Ads" and promote products. When launching Beacon, Facebook stated "no personally identifiable information is shared with an advertiser in creating a Social Ad", and that "Facebook users will only see Social Ads to the extent their friends are sharing information with them." After Facebook was criticized for collecting more user information for advertisers than was previously stated, Zuckerberg publicly apologized on December 5, 2007 for the way Facebook launched Beacon, saying, "The problem with our initial approach of making it an opt-out system instead of opt-in was that if someone forgot to decline to share something, Beacon still went ahead and shared it with their friends."
Privacy
Several concerns have emerged regarding the use of Facebook as a means of surveillance and data mining. Two MIT students were able to download over 70,000 Facebook profiles from four schools (MIT, New York University, the University of Oklahoma, and Harvard University) using an automated shell script, as part of a research project on Facebook privacy published on December 14, 2005. The possibility of data mining remains open, as evidenced in May 2008, when the BBC technology program "Click" demonstrated that personal details of Facebook users and their friends could be stolen by submitting malicious applications.
Privacy proponents have criticized the site's privacy agreement, which states: "We may use information about you that we collect from other sources, including but not limited to newspapers and Internet sources such as blogs, instant messaging services, Facebook Platform developers and other users of Facebook, to supplement your profile." Another clause that received criticism concerned Facebook's right to sell a user's data to private companies, stating: "We may share your information with third parties, including responsible companies with which we have a relationship."[101] This concern was addressed by Facebook spokesman Chris Hughes who said, "Simply put, we have never provided our users' information to third party companies, nor do we intend to."
Concerns have also been raised regarding the difficulty of deleting user accounts. Previously, Facebook only allowed users to "deactivate" their accounts so that their profile was no longer visible. However, any information the user had entered into the website and on their profile remained on the website's servers. This outraged many users who wished to remove their accounts permanently, citing reasons such as the inability to erase "embarrassing or overly-personal online profiles from their student days as they entered the job market, for fear employers would locate the profiles". Facebook changed its account deletion policies on February 29, 2008, allowing users to contact the website to request that their accounts be permanently deleted.
Litigation
Criticism of Facebook#Connectu.com lawsuit
In 2004 ConnectU, a company founded by classmates of Zuckerberg filed a lawsuit against Facebook, claiming that Zuckerberg had broken an oral contract for them to build the Facebook site, copied their idea, and used source code that belonged to them. The parties reached a confidential settlement agreement in February, 2008. In 2008 they attempted unsuccessfully to rescind the settlement, claiming that Facebook had understated its valuation in connection with its settlement negotiations.
StudiVZ
On July 18, 2008, Facebook sued Studivz in a California federal court, alleging that Studivz copied its look, feel, features and services. StudiVZ denied the claims, and asked for declaratory judgment at the District Court in Stuttgart, Germany.
Grant Raphael
On July 24, 2008 the High Court in London ordered Grant Raphael to pay GBP £22,000 (about USD $44,000) for breach of privacy and libel. Raphael had posted a fake Facebook page purporting to be that of a former schoolfriend and business colleague, Matthew Firsht, with whom Raphael had fallen out in 2000. The case is the first successful invasion of privacy and defamation verdict against Facebook.
Thomas "Tom" Anderson is the President of the social networking website, MySpace. He is one of the people identified as a founder of the site, along with CEO Chris DeWolfe. Since newly created MySpace accounts include Tom as a default "friend," he has become known as the face of MySpace. As of October 21, 2008, Tom has almost 250 million "friends", a number which is constantly increasing due to new MySpace accounts being created.
Anderson earned a Bachelor of Arts in Rhetoric and English from the University of California, Berkeley and a Master's Degree in film - critical studies from the University of California, Los Angeles. In 2003, he and a few computer programmers set up the first pages of MySpace and the site grew from there. It is currently the most popular social networking website in the United States, and is the most popular website for teenagers as well, consistently performing among the top sites in United States web traffic rankings.
Age dispute and teen life
As of 2007, Tom Anderson claimed he was born on November 8, 1975. In 2008, reports indicated he was 5 years older.
According to several sources, in 1985 then-14-year-old San Pasqual High School (Escondido, California) student Tom Anderson was a computer hacker operating under the alias Lord Flathead. He was known for leading a team that broke into Chase Manhattan Bank computers, altered records and left a message saying that unless he was given free use of the system he would destroy records. He was never charged.
Role in founding
MySpace#Controversy over corporate history
The corporate history of MySpace has been a matter of some public dispute. When MySpace was purchased by News Corp. they also gained control of the editor's account (the Tom Anderson profile) from which all service announcements are made. Such announcements are not from "Tom Anderson" personally but from the corporate owned identity. It has even been claimed that Tom Anderson's role and image as MySpace founder and "first friend" is a public relations invention.
Another aspect of MySpace's origins that turned out to be misrepresented was Anderson's age. Supposedly 27 when the site was first created, the age stated on his profile followed this information, adding a year with each birthday. It was subsequently revealed that Anderson was five years older than his profile claimed. Speculation on the reasons focused on the benefits in reaching the youth market, by positioning the founders as hip young entrepreneurs instead of "30-somethings".
For the exclamation, see Minced oath.
Crikey.com.au front page.
Crikey is an independent Australian electronic magazine comprising an open access website and an email newsletter available to subscribers. Well known in Australian political, media and business circles, Crikey's influence extends beyond its subscriber base (more than 14,000 paying, and 30,000 'squatters'), described by former Federal Opposition Leader Mark Latham as the "most popular website in Parliament House" in the The Latham Diaries. It often reports unpopular opinions and breaks stories not found in more mainstream media outlets.
Origins
Crikey was founded by shareholder-activist Stephen Mayne, a journalist and former staffer of then Liberal Victorian premier Jeff Kennett. It developed out of Mayne's "jeffed.com" website, which in turn developed out of his abortive independent candidate campaign for Kennett's seat of Burwood. Longstanding Crikey political commentators/reporters include former Liberal insider Christian Kerr (who originally wrote under the pseudonym Hillary Bray) and Hugo Kelly.
Criticism
Critics of Crikey have argued that it often publishes material with little or no substantial evidence to back it up. Stephen Mayne, the then proprietor, was forced to sell his house in order to settle defamation cases brought by radio presenter Steve Price and former ALP senator Nick Bolkus over comments posted about them by Crikey. The publication has since formally adopted stronger correction and right-of-reply policies, including an undertaking to put the rectifications of major errors in a position of equal prominence to the original reports, a policy almost never practiced by traditional newspapers.
Staff of former Treasurer Peter Costello banned Crikey from the 2005, 2006 and 2007 Budget 'lock ups', in which financial journalists are shown the Federal Budget papers some hours in advance so that their publications can report the Budget in depth as soon as it is released, on the uncertain grounds that Crikey is not considered to be part of the "mainstream media".
Sale to Private Media Partners
On February 1, 2005, it was announced that Stephen Mayne had sold Crikey to Private Media Partners, another independent media operator in Australia, owned by former Editor-In-Chief of the Sydney Morning Herald, Eric Beecher, for $A1 million. Under the agreement, Mayne continues to write for Crikey as a business commentator.
Under PMP's stewardship the publication aimed for "professional" style, avoiding the use of inhouse nicknames and other idiosyncrasies of the original Crikey. Soon afterwards, Hugo Kelly was sacked on the grounds of professional misconduct.
MozillaZine is a popular unofficial website about the Mozilla project and is considered to be the main site of the Mozilla community (which also includes sites such as mozdev.org and XULPlanet).
Primarily, MozillaZine reports news about the Mozilla Project. As it is dedicated to Mozilla, it at first tended to report on developments before any one else. Despite the site's advocacy tag, its reporting is considered to be unbiased and fair.[citation needed] The site also hosts the most active Mozilla forums on the web, a community-driven knowledge base of information about Mozilla products, and a number of weblogs by Mozilla developers. Previously, it also hosted Asa Dotzler's comments about the latest nightly builds.
The site was founded by Chris Nelson on September 1, 1998 (just a few months after mozilla.org, which was created on February 23, 1998), and quickly grew in popularity. Many improvements were added to the site (such as the ability to comment on articles) and it soon moved to the mozillazine.org domain and replaced its orange color scheme with a green-blue one featuring the MozillaZine blimp. Originally, the site's main audience was Mozilla developers (both Netscape employees and outsiders), but it soon attracted interested observers and, more recently, end users. On November 14, 1998, MozillaZine merged with MozBin, which brought its webmaster, Jason Kersey, onboard. Chris Nelson phased out his involvement with the site from the beginning of 2001 onwards. In May 2002, Alex Bishop became the site's third member of staff.
Many mistake the site as being an official mouthpiece for Mozilla. However, the site is completely independent of the Mozilla Foundation, though it does maintain good relations with many of the staff as evidenced by its inclusion on the main webpage of the Mozilla Foundation.
In the spirit of open source, MozillaZine allows its content to be translated into different languages by anyone who has the time to spare. Currently, volunteers have made French, Japanese, Chinese, German, Korean, Spanish, Hungarian and Turkish translations available. MozillaZine also syndicates its content via Atom and RSS feeds. Many sites, including Slashdot and Google News, carry MozillaZine's headlines. There is also a #mozillazine IRC channel on irc.mozilla.org.
The January 9, 2008 front page of
The New York Times
Type Daily newspaper
Format Broadsheet
Owner The New York Times Company
Publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr.
Staff writers 350
Founded 1851
Headquarters New York Times Building
620 Eighth Avenue
New York, NY 10018
United States
Circulation 1,000,665 Daily
1,438,585 Sunday
ISSN 0362–4331
Website: nytimes.com
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper published in New York City and distributed internationally. The largest metropolitan newspaper in the United States, "The Gray Lady"—named for its staid appearance and style—is regarded as a national newspaper of record. Founded in 1851, the newspaper has won 98 Pulitzer Prizes, more than any other newspaper. Its motto, as printed in the upper left-hand corner of the front page, is "All the News That's Fit to Print." The Times is owned by The New York Times Company, which publishes 18 other newspapers, including the International Herald Tribune and The Boston Globe. The company's chairman is Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., whose family has controlled the paper since 1896.
This newspaper is organized into three sections: News, Opinions, and Features. The Times stayed with the eight-column format for several years after most papers switched to six columns, and it was one of the last newspapers to adopt color photography. The Times website is rated as one of the most popular websites online, receiving over 14 million unique visitors in August 2008.
History
The Times Square Building, The New York Times' headquarters from 1913 to 2007
New The New York Times headquarters
The New York Times was founded on September 18, 1851, by journalist and politician Henry Jarvis Raymond and former banker George Jones as the New-York Daily Times. The paper changed its name to The New York Times in 1857. The newspaper was originally published every day but Sunday, but during the Civil War the Times, along with other major dailies, started publishing Sunday issues. The paper's influence grew during 1870–71 when it published a series of exposés of Boss Tweed that led to the end of the Tweed Ring's domination of New York's city hall. In the 1880s, the Times transitioned from supporting Republican candidates to becoming politically independent; in 1884, the paper supported Democrat Grover Cleveland in his first presidential election. While this move hurt the Times's readership, the paper regained most of its lost ground within a few years.
The Times was acquired by Adolph Ochs, publisher of The Chattanooga Times, in 1896. The following year, he coined the paper's slogan, "All The News That's Fit To Print"; this was a jab at competing papers such as the New York World and the New York Journal American which were known for lurid yellow journalism. Under his guidance, The New York Times achieved international scope, circulation, and reputation. In 1904, the Times received the first on-the-spot wireless transmission from a naval battle, a report of the destruction of the Russian fleet at the Battle of Port Arthur in the Yellow Sea from the press-boat Haimun during the Russo-Japanese war. In 1910, the first air delivery of the Times to Philadelphia began. The Times' first trans-Atlantic delivery to London occurred in 1919. In 1920, a "4 A.M. Airplane Edition" was sent by plane to Chicago so it could be in the hands of Republican convention delegates by evening.
In the 1940s, the paper extended its breadth and reach. The crossword began appearing regularly in 1942, and the fashion section in 1946. The Times began an international edition in 1946. The international edition stopped publishing in 1967, when it joined the owners of the New York Herald Tribune and The Washington Post to publish the International Herald Tribune in Paris. The paper bought a classical radio station (WQXR) in 1946. In addition to owning WQXR, the newspaper also formerly owned its AM sister, WQEW (1560 AM). The classical music format was simulcast on both frequencies until the early 1990s, when the big-band and standards music format of WNEW-AM (now WBBR) moved from 1130 AM to 1560. The AM station changed its call letters from WQXR to WQEW. By the beginning of the 21st century, the Times was leasing WQEW to ABC Radio for its Radio Disney format, which continues on 1560 AM. Disney became the owner of WQEW in 2007.
The Times had a separate television guide from 1988 to 2006, and was the last major newspaper to outsource its television guide's editorial to a syndication service such as Tribune Media Services, which compiled the guide's TV grids. Theatrical and movie listings were based on the opinions of Times critics and edited by former film critic Howard Thompson from the section's inception in 1988 until a year before his death in 2002, then by Lawrence Van Gelder, Gene Rondinaro, Tim Sastrowardoyo, Neil Genzlinger, and Anita Gates.
The New York Times trails in circulation only to USA Today and The Wall Street Journal. The newspaper is owned by The New York Times Company, in which descendants of Adolph Ochs, principally the Sulzberger family, maintain a dominant role. In March 2007, the paper reported a circulation of 1,120,420 copies on weekdays and 1,627,062 copies on Sundays. In the New York City metropolitan area, the paper costs $1.50 Monday through Saturday and $4 on Sunday. Elsewhere the Sunday edition costs $5. New home delivery subscribers receive a discount. The Times has won 98 Pulitzer Prizes, more than any other newspaper.
The Times has been downsizing for several years, offering buyouts to workers and cutting expenses, in common with a general trend among print news media. At the end of 2005 it had approximately 350 full time reporters and 40 photographers, in addition to hundreds of freelance contributors. In addition to its New York City headquarters, the Times has 16 news bureaus in New York State, 11 national news bureaus and 26 foreign news bureaus. The New York Times reduced its page width to 12 inches (300 mm) from 13.5 inches (340 mm) on August 6, 2007, adopting the width that has become the US newspaper industry standard.
The newspaper's first building was located at 113 Nassau Street in New York City. In 1854, it moved to 138 Nassau Street, and in 1858 it moved to 41 Park Row, making it the first newspaper in New York City housed in a building built specifically for its use. The paper moved its headquarters to 1475 Broadway in 1904, in an area called Long Acre Square, which was renamed to Times Square. The top of the building is the site of the New Year's Eve tradition of lowering a lighted ball, which was started by the paper. The building is also notable for its electronic news zipper, where headlines crawled around the outside of the building. It is still in use, but is not operated by the Times. After nine years in Times Square, an Annex was built at 229 West 43rd Street. After several expansions, it became the company's headquarters in 1913, and the building on Broadway was sold in 1961. Until June 2007, The Times, from which Times Square gets its name, was published at offices at West 43rd Street; the paper stopped printing papers there on June 15, 1997.
The newspaper remained there until early 2007, when it moved three blocks south to 620 Eighth Avenue. A new headquarters for the newspaper, New York Times Tower, is a skyscraper designed by Renzo Piano. It was occupied in June 2007 and is at 620 Eighth Avenue, between West 40th and 41st Streets, in Manhattan.
Times v. Sullivan
New York Times Co. v. Sullivan
The paper's involvement in a 1964 libel case helped bring one of the key United States Supreme Court decisions supporting freedom of the press, New York Times Co. v. Sullivan. In it, the United States Supreme Court established the "actual malice" standard for press reports about public officials or public figures to be considered defamatory or libelous. The malice standard requires the plaintiff in a defamation or libel case prove the publisher of the statement knew the statement was false or acted in reckless disregard of its truth or falsity. Because of the high burden of proof on the plaintiff, and difficulty in proving what is inside a person's head, such cases against public figures rarely succeed.
The Pentagon Papers
In 1971, the Pentagon Papers, a secret United States Department of Defense history of the United States' political and military involvement in the Vietnam War from 1945 to 1971, were given ("leaked") to Neil Sheehan of The New York Times by former State Department official Daniel Ellsberg, with his friend Anthony Russo assisting in copying them. The Times began publishing excerpts as a series of articles on June 13. Controversy and lawsuits followed. The papers revealed, among other things, that the government had deliberately expanded its role in the war by conducting air strikes over Laos, raids along the coast of North Vietnam, and offensive actions taken by US Marines well before the public was told about the actions, and while President Lyndon B. Johnson had been promising not to expand the war. The document increased the credibility gap for the US government, and hurt efforts by the Nixon administration to fight the on-going war.
When the Times began publishing its series, President Richard Nixon became incensed. His words to National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger included "people have gotta be put to the torch for this sort of thing..." and "let's get the son-of-a-bitch in jail." After failing to get the Times to stop publishing, Attorney General John Mitchell and President Nixon obtained a federal court injunction that the Times cease publication of excerpts. The newspaper appealed and the case began working through the court system. On June 18, 1971, The Washington Post began publishing its own series. Ben Bagdikian, a Post editor, had obtained portions of the papers from Ellsberg. That day the Post received a call from the Assistant Attorney General, William Rehnquist, asking them to stop publishing. When the Post refused, the US Justice Department sought another injunction. The US District court judge refused, and the government appealed. On June 26, 1971 the US Supreme Court agreed to take both cases, merging them into New York Times Co. v. United States 403 US 713. On June 30, 1971 the Supreme Court held in a 6–3 decision that the injunctions were unconstitutional prior restraints and that the government had not met the burden of proof required. The justices wrote nine separate opinions, disagreeing on significant substantive issues. While it was generally seen as a victory for those who claim the First Amendment enshrines an absolute right to free speech, many felt it a lukewarm victory, offering little protection for future publishers when claims of national security were at stake.
Ownership
The Ochs-Sulzberger family, one of the United States' great newspaper dynasties, has owned the Times since 1896. After the publisher went public in the 1960s, the family continued to exert control through its ownership of the vast majority of Class B voting shares. Class A shareholders cannot vote on many important matters relating to the company, while Class B shareholders can vote on all matters. Dual-class structures caught on in the mid-20th century as families such as the Grahams of the Washington Post Company sought to gain access to public capital without losing control. Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal, had a similar structure and was controlled by the Bancroft family; the company was later bought by the News Corporation in 2007.
Major Class A shareholders, as of December 31, 2006, included the Sulzberger family (19%), T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc. (14.99%), Private Capital Management Inc. (9.34%), MFS Investment Management (8.28%) and Morgan Stanley Investment Management Inc. (7.15%). The Ochs-Sulzberger family trust controls roughly 88 percent of the company's class B shares. Any alteration to the dual-class structure must be ratified by six of eight directors who sit on the board of the Ochs-Sulzberger family trust. The Trust board members are Daniel H. Cohen, James M. Cohen, Lynn G. Dolnick, Susan W. Dryfoos, Michael Golden, Eric M. A. Lax, Arthur O. Sulzberger, Jr. and Cathy J. Sulzberger.
So far the company's dual-class ownership structure has deterred outside investors from pushing for change in Ochs-Sulzberger control. But in 2008 two hedge funds, Harbinger Capital and Firebrand Partners, bought 19% of The Times. On September 10, 2008, it was reported that Mexican Carlos Slim, one of the world's wealthiest men, had acquired a 6.4 percent stake for $120 million. These moves are seen as putting increasing pressure on the company, whose advertising and circulation have faltered recently. In some circles who? the move by Slim is seen as signaling that the company's assets might be undervalued—as some believed who? Dow Jones' were when Rupert Murdoch acquired it. The downturn in print advertising sales has recently spread to the internet, and some observers speculate that the recent acquisitions of Times Company stock might put increasing pressure on the family to sell, or take the company private to escape Wall Street's unwanted attention.
DyeStat is a popular website that is self-described as "The Internet Home of High School Track & Field". It was founded in 1998 by John Dye, and now features his wife (Donna Dye) as the features editor, senior editor Steve Underwood, assistant editor Dave Devine, two California co-editors (Rich Gonzalez, Doug Speck) and one business/marketing manager (Kirsten Leetch). The site lists many of the best times for both Cross Country and Track & Field on the high school level, while also covering most state and national championships. It is often used as a source for ranking and other statistics by journalists. DyeStat also features forums for athletes to discuss running.
The First 10 Years
DyeStat was founded by John Dye in 1995 and was aimed at high school coaches in western Maryland and served to compile results and rankings. Initially run as an amateur site, the expenses became too high. Sponsors such as Rivals and then Nike provided funds to maintain the sites activities, along with the National Scholastic Sports Foundation (NSSF).
An integral part of the site are the different forums for each state. DyeStat is recommended by both the NSSF and USATF. As of 30 July 2007, the forums have approximately 16,500 members, ranging from high school to international level athletes.
DyeStat also hosts videos and photos from some of the major high school cross country and track & field meets around the country.
ESPN
On June 12, 2008 ESPN announced that it has reached an agreement to acquire Student Sports Inc., which includes DyeStat, to become part of the network's new high school initiative ESPN RISE.
Rankings
DyeStat compiles Elite lists, which chronicle the best high school athletes in the nation as well as high school rankings. page ranking in most events have a depth of about 100 athletes allowing high school athletes to compare themselves to their peers throughout the United States.
DistroWatch is a popular website which provides news, popularity rankings, and other general information about various Linux distributions as well as other free software/open-source operating systems such as OpenSolaris and BSD. It now contains information on several hundred distributions.
The site maintains extensive comparison charts detailing differences between the package sets and software revisions of different distributions. It also provides some general characteristics of distributions such as the price and the supported processor architectures.
Distrowatch has a monthly donations programme, a joint initiative between DistroWatch and two online shops selling low-cost CDs and DVDs with Linux, BSD and other open source software[citation needed]. Since the launch of the Donations Programme in March 2004, DistroWatch has donated a total of $17,283 USD to various open source software projects.
Accuracy
It was originally published on May 31, 2001, and is maintained by Ladislav Bodnar. Despite Bodnar saying "I'd like to believe that there is some truth in the figures, but in all honesty, they really don't mean all that much and should not be taken very seriously", DistroWatch's statistics are often cited as a guide to the popularity of various distributions. Its "page hit counter" has been called "the best 'barometer' of Linux distributions on the Internet".
It has been pointed out that DistroWatch's system is prone to fraudulent statistics, and certain distros have been accused of attempting this, such as Freespire.
Slyck.com is a popular website dedicated to file sharing. It offers news, reviews, and opinion, and has very active user forums. The site tracks the latest versions of file sharing clients and network traffic.
Slyck began operations as Slyway.com during the early summer months of 2000. During this time, Slyck was an aggregate news site with some original content. It was also unique in that it had well written guides to the most popular file-sharing resources at the time. These included Napster, iMesh, Scour, Usenet and IRC.
While all other file-sharing sites at the time served as aggregate news sites, Slyway began writing its own news articles. This became the primary responsibility of their chief news writer, Thomas Mennecke. Slyck.com would become the first site dedicated to P2P and file-sharing with original news.
A year after Slyway opened, it was renamed Slyck.com.
As Slyck.com evolved, it began to receive greater recognition as an important news resource. In 2004, the New Scientist described it as a "popular file sharing news site". Slyck would often have interviews with notable individuals such as Jon Lech Johansen (DVD Jon) , Michael Weiss of StreamCast , Nir Arbel of SoulSeek or Pablo Soto of Optisoft . In 2003, Slyck became the only news source to ever interview Kevin Hearn of WinMX. It gained some fame for interviewing Dean Garfield of the MPAA in 2005. The 2007 Slyck interview with Muslix64, the hacker who first circumvented the AACS protection scheme for HD DVD and Blu-Ray discs, was cited by the BBC , the Electronic Frontier Foundation and InformationWeek .
Slyck remains an important information resource and has become the leading file-sharing/P2P news site. With its ability to understand the unique file-sharing culture, Slyck has gained a reputation for accuracy that mainstream media sites fail to obtain. While Slyck has gained a reputation for accuracy within certain circles, there is no visible editorial policy which could ensure that Slyck does develop into a more credible news website.
According to Alexa Internet, both TorrentFreak and Zeropaid surpassed Slyck's number of page views by August 2007.
Since the departure of staff member Drew Wilson (a.k.a. IceCube) who moved to writing news for Zeropaid.com in January 2008, Mennecke has been the only news writer.
Nico Nico Douga Image:Rc2.gif
URL http://www.nicovideo.jp/
Commercial? Yes
Type of site Video hosting service
Registration Yes
Available language(s) Japanese, Traditional Chinese, German and Spanish
Owner Niwango
Created by Niwango
Launched December 12, 2006
Current status Active
Nico Nico Douga (ニコニコ動画, Niko Niko Dōga?, lit. "Smiley videos") is a popular video sharing website in Japan managed by Niwango. Its nickname is "Niconico" or "Nico-dō", where "nikoniko" is the Japanese ideophone for smiling. Nico Nico Douga is the ninth most visited website in Japan. The site won the Japanese Good Design Award in 2007, and an Honorary Mention of the Digital Communities category at Prix Ars Electronica 2008.
Features
Users can upload, view and share video clips. Unlike other video sharing sites, however, comments are overlaid directly onto the video, synced to a specific playback time. This allows comments to respond directly to events occurring in the video, in sync with the viewer - creating a sense of a shared watching experience. Nico Nico Douga's atmosphere is close to 2channel's or Futaba Channel's, and many popular videos have otaku tastes, such as anime, computer game and pop music. Nico Nico Douga offers tagging of videos. Tags may be edited by any user, not just the uploader. Each video may have up to ten tags, of which up to five may be optionally locked by the uploader, but all others may be edited by any user. Frequently these tags are used not only as categorization, but also as critical commentary, satire, or other humor related to the video's content.
Other features include:
* High video quality: Nico Nico Douga encourages users to pre-encode their videos in a format suitable for unmodified distribution. As of July 5, 2008, h.264 video and AAC audio is supported for both free and premium users.
* Mylist: Each user may create 'mylists', which function similarly to a list of bookmarks. All users can create up to twenty-five mylist folders, while a basic account can have 100 videos recorded and a premium (paid) account 500 videos. Daily mylist activity is used to compute the default ranking view, although one may also sort by view or comment count. Mylists may be optionally made public and linked to; for example, to make a list of one's own works.
* Uploader comments: The uploader of a video may attach permanent comments to the video. These are often used for such things as subtitles, lyrics, or corrections.
* Nicoscript: By using special commands in the uploader comments, the uploader can add special effects to the video, including voting, automatic transfer to another video, quiz scoring, and other features.
History
The first version of Nico Nico Douga used YouTube as a video source. However, as the site became more popular, so much traffic was transferred from YouTube that YouTube blocked access from Nico Nico Douga. Consequently Nico Nico Douga was forced to shutdown the service but two weeks later it commenced its service with its own video server. On May 7, 2007, the Nico Nico Douga for mobile phone users was announced. Since August 9, 2007, "Nico Nico Douga (RC) Mobile" has serviced mobile phones of NTT DoCoMo and au.
As of July 1, 2008, Nico Nico Douga has 7,900,000 registered users and 204,000 premium users. Due to the limited server capacity, Niwango limits the amount of free users accessible to the website at peak times (7pm to 2am), based on the time of registration. The website is written in Japanese and almost all users are Japanese, but one percent of the users are Taiwanese. A Taiwanese version of the site was launched on October 18, 2007. In July 2008, the website was localized to German and Spanish.
The start page of Pantip.com
URL www.pantip.com
Commercial? Yes
Type of site Thai-language forum and portal
Registration By subscription, national identification number required for posting
Owner Wanchat Padungrat
Created by Wanchat Padungrat
Launched 1997
Current status Online
This article is about the Thai Internet forum. For the shopping center, see Pantip Plaza.
Pantip.com is a popular Thai-language website and discussion forum. As of April 2008, Pantip.com was one of the top 10 websites in Thailand, along with rival Thai portal Sanook.com. Discussions about Thai politics and current events on Pantip.com's topic boards are often cited in the Thai press, particularly in such English-language newspapers as the Bangkok Post and The Nation, as a gauge of the public's mood about various issues.
At the beginning, the site gained its popularity from people's misunderstanding of its name which is similar (and identical in English spelling) to Bangkok's famous IT shopping center, Pantip Plaza, however it is in no way affiliated with the mall (The name is actually styled in Thai as พันทิป, meaning a thousand tips.) Nevertheless, there is a significant IT-related community there.
History
Pantip.com was founded in 1997 by Wanchat Padungrat, an electrical engineer. He holds directorship and ownership of the site. Along with the popular Thai-language portal Sanook.com, Pantip.com was one of the first websites established in Thailand when the Internet was being introduced in the country. As opposed to Sanook.com's lucrative buyout from MWeb, a now-defunct dot com company, Wanchat has no plans to sell the site
In a world where the new watchword is Web 2.0, it's vitally important that your website makes the grade as far as quality is concerned. But quality doesn't just mean having a site that looks professional: you also need to have a fully interactive site if you are going to reel in even the most casual of visitors and encourage them to stay put and not go elsewhere to find what they need.
So what is an interactive website? Put simply, it is a site which employs a variety of ways of engaging with the visitor. Many of these techniques are constantly changing, to provide a website with more depth and importance as it develops. In its simplest form you could say that the inclusion of a free hit counter is a step in the right direction; it tells the visitor how many people have already visited the site and it changes constantly as more people discover it.
It's clear that the more interactive features you can include (or at least point to) on the home page, the better the reaction will be from visitors. They will be tempted to think, "Hey, there is plenty to do here. I can really get involved with this site." And that is much more enticing than realising that all they can do is read the information you have given to them and not even have a chance to respond to it.
It can be daunting to start developing your current website into a more interactive one if you don't have any experience of doing so. The best way to begin is by thinking about a simple way to engage with your visitors to see how it develops. This can also give you some great ideas for developing your site and your business in the future as well.
For example, you might want to put a questionnaire or opinion poll on your home page. It doesn't need to be too big, but it could just catch the eye of anyone who sees it and if it does, that could be all you need to keep them on your site for a bit longer.
At the other end of the scale there is the opportunity to add a forum to your website. This can be reached via a link on the home page, and it allows visitors to take an active part in how they interact with your site and what your business stands for. Furthermore, if you keep tabs on what is going on in the forum you can get a good idea of what people want from your business in the future - enabling you to expand and become more successful as a result.
Finally there is the chance to add a blog to your site as well, to allow people to respond directly to your comments on particular subjects related to your business. You should soon see that your hit counter starts to reflect the increased traffic you will experience, which is definitely a step in the right direction.
In terms of making a company recognized, the logo design plays a very significant role. Every company has a desire to make its service familiar to its audience, so they adapt logo design for their marketing purpose. In today's unstable industry, it is very difficult for a company to survive in the competition unless it has a Professional logo design to prove its identity and credibility. Logo design not only gives recognition and opportunities, but also adds a value to the product and service you are offering to your potential customers.
No matter how efficient your product and services may be, your business won't get the desired scope unless you have a professional identity in form of a logo design. A business without a logo design is considered anonymous, so if you want to communicate with your audience, the presence of a logo design is a must for your growth. For a company, its professional image matters a lot, so to make a positive impact the logo design really needs to be customized, visually appealing and usable in terms of appearance and functionalities. In many cases, it has been observed that companies do spend their dollars lavishly behind getting their promotional material designed with attractive features. Having an attractive promotional material is good, but it is also important to see that the promotional material has the logo design, your identity. What is the point in spending millions of dollars in advertising mediums, if the promotional material doesn't have your trademark? In today's industry, where advertising mediums are getting too expensive, logo design service comes as a great relief for small companies to exhibit the selling features of their business in a cost effective manner. Earlier where business promotion was just confined within cards and catalogs and logo design was just considered as a secondary part, but now with arrival of internet technology and growing scope of the term "branding", logo design became a primary importance. Logo design is such a flexible object which can be easily placed on website, stationery products and promotional materials. Thus while getting a logo designed; it is important to see that you are approaching a reliable, experienced and creative logo design firm for your requirement. Instead of making the logo design disorganized with irrelevant graphics and excessive colors, it is good to have a logo design with simple pattern and minimal colors. Even the logo design of reputed companies like Reebok and adidas are simple in terms of appearance so that's why they are widely recognized. As you going to apply the logo design on several mediums, it is very essential to see that your logo design is in vector form so that while resizing or printing, the logo design image doesn't get spoiled. Give a definition to your business by applying logo design service and experience an innovative change. Hurry! Get a logo design now!
It is important to take a strategic approach to website design and development, a one size fits all approach will not pay off in the longer term for your website development.
Creative & Technical Requirements The right combination of creative website design and technical website development expertise is required to provide a balance approach to your website development, it is important to remember a web site development is more often a Marketing activity, even though it will requires technical input from web development experts.
Results, Results, Results The real key to website development and web designing is to plan for and launch a cost effective web-based solution that creates real measurable value with tangible results.
How to get there? Start exploring options where real results can be achieved. Set clear and deliverable website objectives which should be established through examination of the following : Establish your target market Establish your target markets expectations Audit competitors online Identify your Strategic website designing company and design challenges Once these have all been established a detailed web designing specification and web development planning documentation for the implementation of the website's initiative should be drawn up and agreed with all parties involved.
Website Visuals Only at this stage should the website visuals and all aspect of web site's usability be discussed as these will be driven by the requirements set out in the web site specification documents.
Website Structure The web site structure, central and sub-navigational options and layout should be logical, easily accessible and the web site design should aid the user's navigation pathway through the information, making the website experience intuitive and pleasing. The web site's structure and navigation should ensure that all the website's information is accessible either from the top level or within one level deep into the site, so that a visitor can find quickly and easily the information required. Each website's top-level navigation option should have an associated sub-navigation system, which will be incorporated, throughout the website design to deliver an intuitive information resource.
Technical ImplementationOnce the website design visuals have been signed off the project will be ready to hand over to the web development's technical team who will build out the web site, the website templates will be created, navigational architecture will be created and all website pages will be propagated with website graphics and website content and all web development technical requirements will be coded into the web site.
Ongoing Development Once the website development has been deployed it is important to constantly revisit the website's design to ensure the originally agreed objective are being meet and customer requirement are being satisfied.
With technological advancement, web 2.0 web applications are being developed every day and static websites are no longer just simply static, they are either migrated to dynamic websites using PHP, ASP, JSP and other programming languages to provide customized contents to users and also rich interaction or static websites are made more interactive by adding elements like flash banners to impart very interactive look to your website. These dynamic websites have provided user interaction by providing interface for users, eBay online auction store, Amazon book store; Yahoo stores are live examples which let users do real time shopping by creating accounts online, place orders, check their account status and swipe cards for payment - everything is secure online. Ecommerce storefront development, portal development, b2b osCommerce development have mobilized are life and making everything possible over internet.
Now coming to these dynamic websites visibility, these web sites should be search engine friendly but it is really difficult to make these dynamic websites search engine friendly.
What led to need of creating dynamic websites??? With growing need to sell products and services online for global reach and visibility in very short span of time websites are developed and internet proved the best tool for promotion of your business. Selling services through static websites is not a hard nut to crack but coming to selling thousands of products online developers started finding difficulty. Dynamic websites are web sites whose web pages are generated on fly and provide interactive experience to users. Web pages have interactive navigation and generated on demand in comparison to static websites where web pages navigation are just hyperlink based. Static websites are easily indexable by major search engines but dynamic websites are not easily indexed by search engines. With the point to sell products online, ecommerce storefront are developed providing user interactive interface, this virtual online store provides real time shopping interface to its customers. It is not easy to develop a static website to promote thousands of products and manage those pages, as this requires creating unique pages for every product. These dynamic websites to create interactivity use either server side scripting or client side scripting languages. Dynamic web pages are created on fly, many web pages really do not exist on the server, on demand they are created when a user generates a query and if the site is database driven, query string is manipulated and then this string pulls the web page from the database and they do not physically exist and thus are not indexed by search engine. It is not really easy to index these websites, but there are few important ways to optimize these websites for search engines.
URL Rewriting: Dynamic web pages URLs are query strings with delimiters like question mark; also these URLs are very long and have encoded variables generated by scripting languages. These links are generated and modified by scripting language by adding a session id to the generated URLs to keep away users from blocking the cookies, these session ids are unique for every visit of Google. Still many search engines do not index these dynamic web pages, the search engine spider get lost in loops. You need to manually rewrite these URLs by removing special characters, symbols and variables like - ?!= these. Some open source content management systems have modules for URL rewriting. Example: Joomla generates search engine friendly URLs and provides page caching mechanism. CGI/Perl script is another way for getting your site indexed by search engines. Query part of dynamically generated URLs is assigned variable that returns a search engine friendly URLs that are easily indexed by search engine crawlers.
Creating a static site map for your dynamic website: Make sure that your websites' dynamically generated all web pages are linked to the static sitemap page and submit this static web page to search engines and directories.
Other is URL re-write module will help your dynamic website to be indexed by search engines but again it depends on the server your website is hosted. For Apache server mod-rewrite scripting module helps to modify your URL in search engine friendly format. For IIS windows based server ISAP rewrite program is used. Turning off link appendage, PHP.ini file, will instruct server to turn off user session id and only switch on cookies session id (session.use_trans_sid and turn on session.use_only_cookies). This can also be achieved by writing .HTACCESS file and adding "php_flag session.use_trans_sid Off" and php_flag session.use_only_cookies On.
Most important what I want to discuss with you about ecommerce websites are server authentication. .htpasswd and .htaccess are two files that will let you password protect your web pages on server and keep your information safe and secure.
.htpasswd file should be placed anywhere other that directory of the website and its path is defined as /etc/apache2/.htpasswd as it is used to keep user login and password of website's users.
.htaccess file contains access information of the website users and their rights and are placed in the root of website directory.
Now let me come to some of the most important issues - the speed of loading and low overhead for a dynamic web page. Load balancing, bandwidth management, security, encryption are some of the other important issues which we need to consider before creating a dynamic website.
On demand constructed web pages take more response time and also server has to take extra at the time of on-demand page generation. Performance and scalability are most important issues that have risen with these dynamic websites. It is also calculated that server-side latency accounts for 40 percent of the total page delivery time experienced by end users.
To speed up dynamic web pages construction at server side we need to consider dynamic page pre-generation, fragment caching and code caching.
Keywords: custom website development, open source web development, application migration solutions, static websites migration solutions, static websites migration services, database migration services, custom website development
Semi-protected
This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.
Please improve this article if you can. (June 2008)
For the contemporary Christian artist, see Bebo Norman. For the Hungarian sculptor, see Károly Bebo.
Bebo, Inc.
Bebo Logo
"Blog Early Blog Often"
URL http://www.bebo.com
Type of site Social network service
Registration Yes
Available language(s) English
Polish
German
French
Dutch
Spanish
Italian
Owner AOL
Created by Michael Birch
Xochi Birch
Launched January 2005
(relaunched July 2005)
Current status Active
Wikinews has related news:
Exclusive look at Bebo
Bebo is a popular social networking website, founded in January 2005. It can be used in many countries including Ireland, Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia. A Polish version was launched recently, which uses a different user database. There are plans for French German and other versions. Founded by husband and wife Michael and Xochi Birch, Bebo had a major relaunch in July 2005.
It was bought by AOL on March 13, 2008 for $850 m (£417 m).
"Bebo" is an acronym for "Blog early, blog often".
Profiles
Bebo is similar to other social networking sites. Each profile must include two specific modules, a comment section where other users can leave a message, and a list of the user's friends. Users can select from many more modules to add. By default, when an account is created the profile is private, which limits access to friends specifically added. The user may select the "Public Profile" option so as the profile will still be visible to any other members of a school they may have joined. Profiles may be personalized by a design template that is the background of the user's profile, known as a skin.
Profiles may include quizzes which offer multiple choice, polls for their friends to vote in and comment on, photo albums which allows the user to upload an unlimited number of images with a maximum limit of 48 per album, blogs with a comments section, a list of bands of which the user is a fan, a list of groups that the user is a member of. A 'Video Box' may be added, either hot-linked from YouTube, uploaded directly to Bebo's servers via VideoEgg or copied from a Bebo Media Content Provider's page.
Members can view the recent changes friends have made to their homepage from the 'Home' menu. These changes can include uploaded photos, updated flashboxes and newly added videos and friends. A map feature enables members to see who has being viewing their profile. However, the viewer must be logged in while viewing and have their profile set to public in the map section, in order for this to be possible.
Privacy options
Bebo offers three privacy levels: public, private and fully private. Public profiles can be seen by any user, except that profiles of users younger than 16 years are seen only by logged in users. Private profiles are seen only their friends and members of any school or college they have joined. Fully private profiles are ones that have not joined any school and so only their direct friends can view their profile. If a user chooses the 'Public' option, they can also set age restrictions on who can contact them. Age restrictions do not apply to direct friends. Bebo also allows a user to set their photos to private, so only friends can see them and can stop others from copying them too.
Bebo Music
On July 11, 2006, "Bebo Music" was launched (originally as Bebo bands). This allows bands or solo artists to create a profile showcasing their music. The band profiles include a band member list which is similar to the friends list on a normal profile, a list of fans (fans who have added the band as though it were a friend), an area for tour dates, a blog, and a list of songs which have been uploaded for playing through Bebo's media player, or which may be added to other user's playlists. These songs can be grouped by the band into albums, along with cover-art. All band members can edit the content of the band profile.
Bebo Authors
On February 22, 2007, Bebo Authors, also known as Bebo Books, was launched. On this section of the site, authors can upload chapters of their books and also get them reviewed with a certain module. Currently there is no module to display books on a profile page like there is for Bands and Groups.
Bebo Groups
On July 10, 2007, the 'Group' module was added to pages. This enabled people to view groups which were previously joined to a school and were also viewable only to school members. Bebo also gave an option to convert existing Authors or Bands to Groups. This conversion takes up to 24 hours as the profile must be manually changed by a member of Bebo staff. Group pages give users an option to join things they find interesting. These groups can often be educational as well as associated with pop culture.
Bebo Mobile
On October 13, 2007, Bebo launched a mobile service which allows users to receive text alerts and update their profile via their mobile phone. This is currently available to Orange UK and O2 Ireland customers. The service consists of a mobile site, text alerts for new comments and photo only uploads via mms.On March 19, 2008, Bebo launched a new mobile site which can be accessed by any mobile phone users on any network and not just Orange UK and O2 Ireland customers. This can be used by pointing your browser at m.bebo.com.
Bebo mobile can be sometimes used as a spam tool by some users using bots.
Integration with instant messaging
Users can add their AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), Skype and Windows Live Messenger user names to their Bebo profile. For Skype and Windows Live Messenger Bebo offers links to quickly chat or add that user in that program. The Windows Live Messenger links show up only in Internet Explorer by default, as it uses the 'msnim' protocol. They can be used in another web browser such as Firefox or Opera by masking the user agent as Internet Explorer and using a tool called the WLM Protocol Handler to handle the msnim protocol. Using the AIM links to contact someone opens up a Web AIM client. Bebo also offers a co-branded AIM downloadable client.
Bebo Open Media Platform
Announced on the November 13, 2007, Bebo Open Media Platform is a platform for companies to distribute content to the Bebo community. Content providers can bring their media player to Bebo, and monetize the advertising within it. Each content provider has a specialised page designed for video which showcases any Adobe Flash video content at the top of the profile. Many networks are signed up for the service, including CBS, Sky, Ustream.tv, BBC and Last.fm.
URL http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/
Commercial? Yes
Type of site Entertainment
Registration Free/restricted to ISP e-mail - Use of anonymous email such as Hotmail/Yahoo/Gmail etc with one time payment of a User Verification Fee
Owner Hachette Filipacchi (UK) Ltd
Created by Digital Spy Ltd
Digital Spy (or DS as it is often known by its users) is a British Entertainment and Media website, noted for its extensive Big Brother coverage and forums. According to comScore figures, it is the fourth largest British entertainment website with 2.1 million unique users on its news site and 3.1 million forum users. According to Alexa Internet traffic statistics, as of June 2008, Digital Spy is the 83rd most popular website in the United Kingdom and has an overall Alexa ranking of 1,862.
The site was first established on January 18, 1999 as digiNEWS before the then member sites of the digiNEWS network were merged and Digital Spy Ltd was formally incorporated in 2001. The website's latest design was launched on March 1, 2006. Digital Spy has been described as "the nation's favourite showbiz website" by one magazine.
On April 9, 2008 it was announced that the website was purchased earlier in the month by magazine publisher Hachette Filipacchi UK, a subsidiary of the Lagardère Group[1][6] for a "significant" sum.
Forums
The site also features forums which went live in March 2000. The forums themselves incorporate one of the largest media-based discussion centres on the internet,[dubious – discuss] with topics covering the above as well as computing, telephony, gaming, politics, radio, sport and general discussion, which also has sub forum called chatter for less serious general discussion. On the 10th May 2007, the number of registered users climbed above the 200,000 mark. In February 2008 this had grown to over 245,000. To date over 87,500 users have never participated in the forums.
The forums are powered by twelve front end Apache HTML servers running on FreeBSD and a cluster of four MySQL database servers. The forums utilise the vBulletin software.
During Big Brother over 40,000 posts per day can be added to the forums - currently around 180,000 posts are made each week. The peak usage during Big Brother was in January 2007 was a new record of over 17,000 concurrent online users in the aftermath of Jade Goody's eviction. In December 2007 after the end of an X-Factor show the Digital Spy Forums saw over 20,000 online users and registered over 320,000 pages displayed between 10 and 11pm on that evening. In July 2007, The Times reported on the number of customers who had registered on the forums to express their concerns and negative aspects of the Virgin Media cable service.
Representatives of several major companies including Top Up TV, Joost, Sky, Goodmans and Amstrad CEO Sir Alan Sugar are registered members that post on the forum.
Commercial? No
Type of site Reality Video blogging
Registration None
Available language(s) English
Launched April, 1996
JenniCam (or JenniCAM)—subtitled "life, online"—was a popular website from April 1996 until the end of 2003. Several webcams allowed users to observe the life of a young woman, Jennifer Kaye Ringley (born August 10, 1976 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania).
Previously, live webcams transmitted static shots from cameras aimed through windows or at coffee pots. Ringley's innovation was simply to allow others to view her daily activities. Her pioneering efforts paved the way for later lifecasters such as Justin Kan, Justine Ezarik, Sarah Austin and Justin Shattuck.
In June 2008, CNET hailed JenniCam as one of the greatest defunct websites in history.
Semi-protected
eBaum's World URL eBaumsWorld.com
Commercial? Yes
Type of site Entertainment website
Registration Optional
Owner Eric Bauman
Created by eBaum's World Inc.
Launched 2001 (incorporated since December 3, 2002)
eBaum's World (subtitled "Media for The Masses") is a popular website based in Rochester, New York featuring entertainment media such as videos, Flash cartoons and web games. It is highly controversial for many reasons, primarily due to allegations that content on the website is taken from other sources without permission and rebranded with the eBaum's World logo. The site, which is owned by Eric "eBaum" Bauman, a native of Rochester, New York, ranks in the top 1000 sites on the Internet according to the website Alexa. It is co-owned by Eric's secretary and father, Neil Bauman.
Features
The site features individual celebrity soundboards, where users can click buttons to hear quotes or phrases spoken by that celebrity. By pressing certain buttons in an organized order, users can simulate the celebrities saying unusual things. In this way, the soundboards are commonly used in prank phone calls. These calls are often recorded and subsequently re-submitted to the site.
eBaum's World has a very large forum community, with thousands of members and over one million posts. There is also a chatroom, and a store which sells eBaum merchandise. There is also a section called "Moron Mail" which features feedback sent in by users.
eBaum's World has a very large collection of prank and comedic photos which are divided into signs, Photoshop images, and misleading croppings of normal pictures.
This site also has a very large collection of Flash movies and games from across the internet. Some of the more famous ones are Peanut Butter Jelly Time (despite the creator's explicit statements that he does not want it hosted on eBaum's World, and "Where's Waldo?".
Barrysworld was a popular British multiplayer gaming website which hosted many servers for various video game titles. Originally run by a volunteer organisation, during the late 1990s and early 2000s it ran a multitude of servers for popular multiplayer games of the time including: Counter-Strike, Half-Life, Quake, Quake II, Quake III, Starsiege: Tribes, Team Fortress and Unreal Tournament. The website and its multiplayer servers were launched in early 1998, having evolved from several 'clan' servers previously operated by the website's creators.
While the website and free multiplayer servers proved popular, claiming to have around 300,000 registered users, the organisation behind the website struggled at times to find funds for the hardware and bandwidth required to support such a service.
Around the year 1999, it started offering a pay-per-use modem dialup service and along with supporting the free multiplayer services and website, propelled Barrysworld to being the 4th largest internet service provider (ISP) in the UK (based on call minutes per month). However, as cheap flat-rate narrowband and broadband services from more main-stream ISP's became popular and the dot com crash made venture capitalists apprehensive about funding such organizations and Barrysworld once again struggled to find funds to support its activities. While the organisation tried for a while to support the service by offering rentable game servers and (non-compulsory) subscriptions, by 2001 the funding crisis had forced the organisation, which by now had 35 payrolled staff, into liquidation.
The British video game retailing company GAME.net purchased the website and its assets soon after and for the next couple of years ran the website and multiplayer service in a similar manner, hoping the multiplayer service would promote its products.
In 2003 the original creators of Barrysworld parted ways from the GAME.net company and relaunched the service supported by a volunteer based organisation using a new website http://www.freddyshouse.com.
The name Barrysworld is a reference to the character Barry the Time Sprout in novels by Robert Rankin.
Type Private
Founded Edmonton, Alberta,
February 2003
Headquarters Edmonton, Alberta
Key people Timo Ewalds (Founder),
Boris Wertz (CEO)
Website nexopia.com
Type of site Social Networking, Forums
Registration Required
Available in English
Launched February 2003
Current status Active
Nexopia.com is a popular Canadian social networking website based in downtown Edmonton which was created by Timo Ewalds. It is designed as a general interactive site for people aged 14 and up. Users are able to create and design their own profiles, friends list, blogs, galleries, articles, and forums. Interaction is accomplished through an internal personal messaging system, and public user comments on profiles, blogs or through threads and posts on the forums.
History
Nexopia evolved from the small community site called Enternexus.com, a website built by Timo Ewalds. An initial beta site limited to 70 members led to the current website. Initial growth was as follows, 4 days to hit 100 users, and 22 months to hit 225 000 users. A short period of time existed where the website was growing by 10% per day (3500 new users per day) For the month of January 2005, bandwidth was estimated at 8-10 terabytes.
The website initially had problems using Paypal as a payment method for their premium service (Plus) due to their demographic and issues with stolen credit cards. In recent years however it has had great success with Interac Online, a service that allows account holders at participating banks to make payments online through Online banking.
The website has also been the target of hackers and has been targeted by Distributed Denial of Service or DDoS attacks at least twice.
Update
Nexopia launched an update to it's user profile pages, the largest revision since the site's launch in 2003. The redesign includes a streamlined layout, Ajax controls for messages, galleries, and profile editing, new profile skinning options, and image resizing. The update to the website has caused much controversy among users due to recent issues. Such as slow load times, profile pictures being deleted or not uploading, private messages not being sent, forms not working correctly, and people angry simply because the site design was different. Nexopia staff had recently set up a poll asking what users disliked most about the new Nexopia site design. After finding that the majority of users disliked the new profile picture slider the most, Nexopia staff decided to provide the option to switch between the classic profile picture viewer and the new improved profile picture slider.
Members
Over 95% of its users are Canadian and the site has become quite popular in western Canada, with over 1.3 million member accounts and over 500,000 active users and a hit count of over 32 billion. During peak hours the site sometimes reaches over 30,000 users and several thousand guests online.
No nudity, racism, violence or gore are allowed in any of the forums or profiles, although photos of drugs are accepted only to a certain degree, and that degree is only a small amount of marijuana and the use of pipes and bongs. Any other controlled substance i.e. heroin, cocaine, or any other classified "hard drug" is not allowed. Alcohol is also accepted. All profile pictures are checked by specially appointed "pic mods" before being allowed up on a user's page. Photos put on a user's profile are not checked, but there is a "report abuse" button where another user can report anything that is not to Nexopia code of conduct. Nexopia also takes a hard stance against piracy, presumably in fear of litigation. Over the last few years Nexopia has come under fire from various hard line parent groups who blamed many of their children's problems on the website and sought for it to be shut down. This has resulted in a policy change and forced Nexopia to be more strict about what users post on the website.
In March 2007, four students from Sherwood Park, Alberta were expelled from school and twenty given suspensions in a case of cyberbullying. Students from the Elk Island school district used Nexopia to create profiles of their teachers in which classmates posted defamatory, derogatory, and libellous information on the teachers' pages.
Outpost Gallifrey Outpost Gallifrey front page on 23 August 2006
URL http://www.gallifreyone.com
Commercial? Yes
Type of site Fan site
Registration Free
Owner Shaun Lyon
Created by Shaun Lyon
Outpost Gallifrey was a popular fan website for the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was active as a complete fan site from 1995 until 2007, and now exists as a portal to the still-active parts of the site, including its news page and forums (rebranded as The Doctor Who Forum and The Doctor Who News Page, but still part of the original site architecture). It still exists as a heavily travelled fan site and is still updated to a certain extent.
Main site
Launched on December 11, 1995, the site was created and administered by Shaun Lyon. The site was based in the United States, and associated with the annual Los Angeles Doctor Who convention Gallifrey One. In March 2006, the Los Angeles Times referred to Outpost Gallifrey as "the premier Doctor Who website" in America. In November 2006, an interviewer for bbc.co.uk recommended Outpost Gallifrey as a "terrific fan site", along with the BBC's official Doctor Who website. The site's news page was known in the Doctor Who fan community for being a generally reliable source of news for the programme. Its front page claimed that the website received over 25,000 readers every day, rising to up to 50,000 at times of peak interest in the show such as a series premiere or finale.
The site had numerous sections such as an episode guide (giving cast and crew details and story outlines), feature articles and a reviews section. Reader and member submissions were accepted by Lyon.
On October 9, 2006, Lyon announced that he would no longer be updating the news pages due to the fact that his "heart was no longer in [the constant news collection and editing] anymore." The initial plan was that most of the website would be archived, with only the forum and pages related to the annual Gallifrey One convention continuing to be updated regularly. However, on November 2, 2006, Lyon announced that the site's news page would be returning in a new form, with Lyon as editor-in-chief and a committee of reporters from the US, UK and beyond. The news page was relaunched on 1 December, along with the newly-incorporated Web Guide to Doctor Who, a manually maintained listing of Doctor Who websites. Previously this web guide had been a separate site, edited by Paul Harman over ten years.
On January 21, 2007, the website became affiliated with the popular Doctor Who podcast Doctor Who: Podshock.
On August 27, 2007, Lyon announced that "Outpost Gallifrey as you know it has come to an end." The active parts of the site would be split into four separate websites, with the rest of the site to be archived. Specifically, the Outpost Gallifrey News Page would be relaunched as the Doctor Who News Page (at www.doctorwhonews.com); the Outpost Gallifrey forum would become the Doctor Who Forum (at www.doctorwhoforum.com); the address www.gallifreyone.com would be retained for the Gallifrey One convention in Los Angeles; and the Web Guide to Doctor Who would continue at www.doctorwhowebguide.com. However, it was not until December 1, 2007 that those changes came about, when the front page became a single links page to the various new sites, and Outpost Gallifrey was formally closed as a one-stop site. It exists now as a portal to the subsites.
As of 2008, the component sites of the former Outpost Gallifrey are still referred to by the site's old name.
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