p2p news developments and commentaries

An index of recent social software projects, at http://socialsoftware.weblogsinc.com/entry/2127913924623224

Here is an outline of the categories, with the names of the sites:

business networking sites
The Conneck, Corporate Alumni, ecademy, Eliyon, EntreMate, GoingProfessional, Growth Company, I’m Not From Here, ItsNotWhatYouKnow, LinkedIn, matcheroo, Mediabistro, Monster Networking, Networking For Professionals, Online Business Networking Resource, PowerMingle, RealContacts, ReferNet, Ryze, Silicon Valley Pipeline, Spoke Software, Sullivan Executive Networking Community, TENG.

common interest networking sites
Buzznet, Classmates.com, Community Zero, Company of Friends, Delphi Forums, Globe Alive, gradFinder, HOT or NOT?, Netplaya Burning Man Community, Talk City.

dating sites
Amigos.com, AsiaFriendFinder, FriendFinder, GermanFriendFinder, IndianFriendFinder, Love.com, Match.com, MyEMatch, Passion.com, RateOrDate, RedDate.com, SeniorFriendFinder, uDate.com, Yahoo! Personals.

face-to-face meeting facilitation sites
8minuteDating, Evite, First Tuesday, The Lunch Club NYC, MeetUp, MixerMixer, Netparty, Social Circles, WhizSpark.

friend networking sites
Backwash, BuddyBridge, Chia Friend, enCentra, everyonesconnected, Friend Surfer, Friendster, Friendzy, Gruuve, hi5, hipster, Huminity, Living Directory, mrNeighborhood, Myspace.com, orkut, PalJunction, peeps nation, Ringo, Tickle by Emode, Tribe.net, Wallop, WorldShine, Zerodegrees.

international friend networking sites
easeek, eConozco.com, eFriendsnet, Friendity, Friends Reunited, HeiYou, LianQu, qpengyou, Shortcut, UUFriends, WiW, YeeYoo, YOYO.

pet networking sites
Backwash for Pets, Dogster.

social network sharing & analysis sites
BuddyZoo, del.icio.us, Dude Check This Out!, Eurekster!, Funchain.com, HelloWorld, KnowMates, The Opinion Exchange, RepCheck, Small World Project, Social Grid, StumbleUpon, Zdarmanet.

social networking software sites
Affinity Engines, Contact Network, InterAction, NetMiner, Netmodular Community, Salesforce.com, Visible Path, WisdomBuilder.


And here are suggestions for further refining of these categories

Posted Feb 1, 2004, 6:37 AM ET by Marc Eisenstadt
Hi; a few quick thoughts (followup to private email, but worth posting, I figured):1. Yes, BuddySpace (http://kmi.open.ac.uk/projects/buddyspace/) certainly belongs, since social networking is a large part of what it's all about... but, interestingly, there's no obvious 'niche' for it and similar 'highly synchronous' and 'large scale visualization' tools... *THEREFORE*, a bit of 'iterative refinement' suggests the following modifications to your categories:2. I suggest adding an additional category for 'Synchronous/RealTime Social Networking', and include all the big name Instant Messengers, plus of course BuddySpace, the general world of Jabber (www.jabber.org), and others like Odigo, which masterfully integrated IM, user-profile/matchmaking/dating capabilities, and collaborative web browsing3. I would also add an extra category for 'Large-scale Peer-to-Peer and File-Sharing Networks', which is where your Napster, KaZaa, Gnutella, et al would fit in nicely... these have a strong 'shared presence' element including adding people to 'hot lists' based on their music preferences, and it's great to see that 7,875,234 others are online with you right this moment!4. I would also add a category for 'Massively Multiplayer Online Games' (including RolePlaying, i.e MMORG), such as Everquest, Asheron's Call, etc., which have phenomenal user bases, strong social networking capabilities, 'karma' points, allegiance, etc. .. in many ways these are the Grand-daddies of Social Networking!5. Another strong category would be 'reputation/karma-based systems', such as Ebay, epinions, Amazon6. What about a category for emergent democracy and political networking?7. You ought to have, in effect, a 'Meta-SNS', which would cover 'Commenters', 'Blogging about blogging', and similar, such as SmartMobs, many2many, your own socialsoftware.weblogsinc.com, and many of the popular bloggers like Marc Canter and his circle of friends!8. Maybe your 'social network sharing & analysis' label should be augmented to be 'social networking sharing, analysis & visualization'... there are many tools that make a big point about being able to visualize networks... not only the obvious ones like BuddySpace and Huminity, but also many to be found on Martin Dodge's excellent Cybergeography.org site. 9. you can't really allow a catchall category called 'social networking software sites', as you have at the moment, because this recursively 'forestalls the evil day', since that category is essentially what your entire list is (or will become), so I would move those individual items off into more specific categories.