http://www.top-1000.org http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Aardvark Topsites PHP http://www.top-1000.org http://www.top-1000.org/ http://www.top-1000.org/index.php?a=out&u=youtube&go=1 YouTube (pronunced /juːtuːb/ or /juːtjuːb/[1]) is a video sharing website where users can upload, view and share video clips. YouTube was created in mid-February 2005 by three former PayPal employees.[2] The San Bruno-based service uses Adobe Flash technology to display a wide variety of video content, including movie clips, TV clips and music videos, as well as amateur content such as videoblogging and short original videos. In October 2006, Google Inc. announced that it had reached a deal to acquire the company for US$1.65 billion in Google stock. The deal closed on November 13, 2006.[3] Unregistered users can watch most videos on the site, while registered users are permitted to upload an unlimited number of videos. Some videos are available only to users of age 18 or older (e.g. videos containing potentially offensive content). The uploading of pornography or videos containing nudity is generally not allowed. Related videos, determined by title and tags, appear onscreen to the right of a given video. In YouTube's second year, functions were added to enhance user ability to post video 'responses' and subscribe to content feeds. http://www.top-1000.org/index.php?a=stats&u=youtube http://www.top-1000.org/index.php?a=out&u=google&go=1 Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG and LSE: GGEA) is an American public corporation, specializing in Internet search and online advertising. The company is based in Mountain View, California, and has 15,916 full-time employees (as of September 30, 2007).[3] Google's mission statement is, "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."[4] It is the largest American company (by market capitalization) that is not part of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Google's corporate philosophy includes statements such as "Don't be evil" and "Work should be challenging and the challenge should be fun", illustrating a somewhat relaxed corporate culture. Google was co-founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were students at Stanford University and the company was first incorporated as a privately held company on September 7, 1998. Google's initial public offering took place on August 19, 2004, raising $1.67 billion, making it worth $23 billion. Through a series of new product developments, acquisitions and partnerships, the company has expanded its initial search and advertising business into other areas, including web-based email, online mapping, office productivity, and video sharing, among others. http://www.top-1000.org/index.php?a=stats&u=google http://www.top-1000.org/index.php?a=out&u=facebook&go=1 Facebook is a social networking website that allows people to communicate with their friends and exchange information. Launched on February 4, 2004, Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg, a former member of the Harvard class of 2006 and former Ardsley High School student. Initially the membership was restricted to students of Harvard College. It was subsequently expanded to all Ivy League schools within two months. Many individual universities were added in rapid succession over the next year. Eventually, people with a university (e.g .edu, .ac.uk, etc.) email address from institutions across the globe were eligible to join. Networks were then initiated for high schools and some large companies. Since September 11, 2006, it has been made available to users with any email address[2], if they are within a certain age range. Users can select to join one or more participating networks, such as a high school, place of employment, or geographic region. As of October 2007, the website had the largest number of registered users among college-focused sites, with 43 million active members worldwide,[3] with membership expected to surpass 60 million users by the end of the year (also from non-collegiate networks).[4] As of mid-November, active membership is quoted at 54 million.[5] From September 2006 to September 2007[6] it increased its ranking from 60th to 5th [7][8] The name of the site refers to the paper facebooks depicting members of the campus community that some U.S. colleges and preparatory schools give to incoming students, faculty, and staff as a way to get to know other people on campus. http://www.top-1000.org/index.php?a=stats&u=facebook http://www.top-1000.org/index.php?a=out&u=myspace&go=1 MySpace is a social networking website offering an interactive, user-submitted network of friends, personal profiles, blogs, groups, photos, music and videos internationally. It is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California, USA,[1] where it shares an office building with its immediate owner, Fox Interactive Media; in turn, the owner of Fox Interactive and therefore MySpace, News Corporation, is headquartered in New York City. According to Alexa Internet, MySpace is currently the world's sixth most popular English-language website and the sixth most popular website in any language,[2] and the third most popular website in the United States, though it has topped the chart on various weeks.[3] The service has gradually gained more popularity than similar websites to achieve nearly 80 percent of visits to online social networking websites.[3] It has become an increasingly influential part of contemporary popular culture, especially in English speaking countries.[citation needed] The company employs 300 staff[4] and does not disclose revenues or profits separately from News Corporation. With the 100 millionth account being created on August 9, 2006,[5] in the Netherlands[6] and a news story claiming 106 million accounts on September 8, 2006,[7] the site reportedly attracts new registrations at a rate of 230,000 per day. As of September 7, 2007, there are over 200 million accounts. http://www.top-1000.org/index.php?a=stats&u=myspace http://www.top-1000.org/index.php?a=out&u=friendster&go=1 social network service. The Friendster site was founded in Mountain View, California, United States by Jonathan Abrams in March 2002 [1] and is privately owned. Friendster is based on the Circle of Friends (social network) and Web of Friends techniques for networking individuals in virtual communities and demonstrates the small world phenomenon. It currently has 50 million users. Friendster was considered the top online social network service until around April 2004 when it was overtaken by MySpace in terms of page views, according to Nielsen Online. [2] Friendster has also received competition from all-in-one sites such as Windows Live Spaces, Bebo, Yahoo! 360, and Facebook. Of late, newer websites like hi5 are posing new competition for friendster.[3] Google offered $30,000,000 to buy out Friendster in 2003, but they were turned down. [4] Friendster was funded by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Benchmark Capital in October 2003 with a reported valuation of $53 million. In April 2004, John Abrams was removed as CEO and Tim Koogle took over as interim CEO. Koogle previously served as President and CEO at Yahoo!. Koogle was later replaced by Scott Sassa in June 2004. Sassa left in May 2005 and was replaced by Taek Kwon. Taek Kwon was then succeeded by Kent Lindstrom, following a recapitalization by Kleiner and Benchmark that valued Friendster at less than one-twentieth its 2003 valuation. Friendster's decision to remain private instead of selling to Google in 2003 is considered one of the biggest blunders of Silicon Valley, the Associated Press claims. http://www.top-1000.org/index.php?a=stats&u=friendster http://www.top-1000.org/index.php?a=out&u=apple&go=1 Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL, LSE: ACP, FWB: APC), formerly Apple Computer, Inc., is an American multinational corporation with a focus on designing and manufacturing consumer electronics and closely related software products. Established in Cupertino, California on April 1, 1976, Apple develops, sells, and supports a series of personal computers, portable media players, mobile phones, computer software, and computer hardware and hardware accessories. As of September 2007, the company operates 194 retail stores in the United States, and more in the United Kingdom, Japan, Canada, and Italy,[3] and online stores where hardware and software products are sold. The iTunes Store provides music, audiobooks, iPod games, music videos, episodes of television programs, and movies which can be downloaded using iTunes on Mac or Windows, and also on the iPod touch and the iPhone. The company's best-known hardware products include the Macintosh line of personal computers, the iPod line of portable media players, and the iPhone. Apple's software products include the Mac OS X operating system, the iLife suite of multimedia and creativity software, and Final Cut Studio, a suite of professional audio- and film-industry software products. The company, incorporated January 3, 1977,[4] was known as "Apple Computer, Inc." for its first 30 years. On January 9, 2007, the company dropped "Computer" from its corporate name.[5] The change followed Apple's announcement of its new iPhone smartphone and Apple TV digital video system and reflects the company's ongoing expansion into the consumer electronics market in addition to its traditional focus on personal computers.[6] Apple employs over 20,000 permanent and temporary workers worldwide[2] and had worldwide annual sales in its fiscal year 2007 (ending September 29, 2007) of US$24.01 billion.[1] For a variety of reasons, ranging from its philosophy of comprehensive aesthetic design to its countercultural, even indie roots, as well as their advertising campaigns, Apple has engendered a distinct reputation in the consumer electronics industry and has cultivated a customer base that is unusually devoted to the company and its brand, particularly in the United States.[7] http://www.top-1000.org/index.php?a=stats&u=apple http://www.top-1000.org/index.php?a=out&u=digg&go=1 Digg is a community-based popularity website with an emphasis on technology and science articles, recently expanding to a broader range of categories such as politics and entertainment. It combines social bookmarking, blogging, and syndication with a form of non-hierarchical, democratic editorial control. News stories and websites are submitted by users, and then promoted to the front page through a user-based ranking system. This differs from the hierarchical editorial system that many other news sites employ. Digg started out as an experiment in November 2004 by Kevin Rose, Owen Byrne, Ron Gorodetzky, and Jay Adelson. All currently play an active role in the management of the site. Digg, Version 1.6 Digg, Version 1.6 "We started working on developing the site back in October 2004," Kevin Rose told ZDNet[1] "We started toying around with the idea a couple of months prior to that, but it was early October when we actually started creating what would become the beta version of digg. The site launched to the world on December 5th 2004." Kevin Rose's friend David Prager (The Screen Savers, This Week in Tech) originally wanted to call the site “Diggnation”, but Kevin wanted a simpler name. He chose the name "Digg", because users are able to "dig" stories, out of those submitted, up to the front page. The site was called “Digg” instead of “Dig” because the domain name “dig.com” was previously registered. “Diggnation” would eventually be used as the title of Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht's weekly podcast. The original design was free of advertisements, and was designed by Dan Ries. As Digg became more popular, Google AdSense was added to the website. In July 2005, the site was updated to "Version 2.0". The new "version" featured a friends list, the ability to "digg" a story without being redirected to a "success" page, and a new interface designed by web design company Silverorange [2]. The site developers have stated that in future versions a more minimalist design will likely be employed. On Monday June 26, 2006 version 3 of Digg was released with specific categories for Technology, Science, World & Business, Videos, Entertainment and Gaming as well as a View All section where all categories are merged. Digg has grown large enough that submissions sometimes create a sudden increase of traffic to the "dugg" website. This is referred to by some Digg users as the "Digg effect" and by some others as the site being "dugg to death". However, in many cases stories are linked simultaneously on several popular bookmarking sites. In such cases, the impact of the "digg effect" is difficult to isolate and assess. Wordpress is especially hated among diggers for its frequency to crash under the increased traffic. On August 27, 2007 Digg altered their main interface. http://www.top-1000.org/index.php?a=stats&u=digg http://www.top-1000.org/index.php?a=out&u=yahoo&go=1 Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) is an American public corporation and global Internet services company. It provides a range of products and services including a web portal, a search engine, the Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, news, and posting. It was founded by Stanford University graduate students Jerry Yang and David Filo in January of 1994 and incorporated on March 2, 1995. The company is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. According to Web traffic analysis companies (including Comscore, Alexa Internet and Netcraft), Yahoo! has been one of the most visited websites on the Internet,[3] with more than 130 million unique users.[4] The global network of Yahoo! websites received 3.4 billion page views per day on average as of October 2007, making it one of the most visited U.S. websites. http://www.top-1000.org/index.php?a=stats&u=yahoo http://www.top-1000.org/index.php?a=out&u=blogger&go=1 Blogger is a blog publishing system. It was created by Pyra Labs, which was bought by Google in 2003. History * On August 23, 1999, Blogger was launched by Pyra Labs. As one of the earliest dedicated blog-publishing tools, it is credited for helping popularize the format. * In February 2003, Pyra Labs was acquired by Google under undisclosed terms. The acquisition allowed premium features that Pyra charged for to be free. About a year later, Pyra Labs' co-founder, Evan Williams, left Google. * In 2004, Google purchased Picasa; it integrated Picasa and its photo sharing utility Hello into Blogger, allowing users to post photos to their blogs. * On May 9, 2004, Blogger introduced a major redesign, adding features including CSS-compliant templates, individual archive pages for posts, comments, and posting by email. * On 14 August 2006, Blogger launched its latest version in beta, codenamed Invader, alongside the gold release. This migrated users to Google servers, as well including some new features. * In December 2006, this new version of Blogger was taken out of beta. * As of May 2007, Blogger has completely moved over to Google operated servers. [edit] Features Blogs can either be hosted internally by Blogger on the blogspot.com Internet domain, on a user's own domain, or externally on the user's own server (through FTP or SFTP). Once a blog name has been reserved, the name assignment and any contents are retained for an indefinite time—there is no need to login periodically or take any action to keep the blog active. Blogger's blogs also support HTML, so Youtube videos can be posted. The new Blogger logo The new Blogger logo [edit] Redesign As part of the Blogger redesign in 2006, all blogs associated with a user's Google Account are located on Google servers. The service is now claimed to be more reliable, due to the quality of the servers.[1] Along with the migration to Google servers, several new features were introduced, including label organization, a drag-and-drop template editing interface, reading permissions (to create private blogs) and new Web feed options. Furthermore, blogs are updated dynamically, as opposed to rewriting HTML files. [edit] Integration * The Google Toolbar has a feature called "BlogThis!" which allows toolbar users with Blogger accounts to post links directly to their blogs. * "Blogger for Word" is a free add-in for Microsoft Word. This add-in allows users to save a Microsoft Word Document directly to a Blogger blog, as well as edit their posts both on- and offline. As of January 2007, Google says "Blogger for Word is not currently compatible with the new version of Blogger", and they state no decision has been made about supporting it with the new Blogger.[2] However, Microsoft Office 2007 adds native support for a variety of blogging systems, including Blogger. * Blogger supports Google's AdSense service as a simple way of generating revenue from running a blog. * Blogger offers multiple author support, making it possible to establish group blogs. [edit] Criticisms In order to upgrade to the new Blogger service (which has new features and more reliability), a user would have to create a Google Account.[citation needed] There is also a petition to change the abandoned blog policy, which does not allow blogspot.com addresses to expire, preventing new users from taking abandoned addresses.[3] Even though Blogger is owned by Google, which is primarily a search engine, the contents of the blogs are mostly not indexed by the main search engine, but only by the more specialized "Blog Search" feature. http://www.top-1000.org/index.php?a=stats&u=blogger http://www.top-1000.org/index.php?a=out&u=wikipedia&go=1 Wikipedia (IPA: /ˌwɪkɨˈpiːdiə, ˌwiːkiˈpiːdiə/, or /ˌwiːkiˈpeɪdiə/) (Audio (U.S.) (help·info)) is a multilingual, web-based, encyclopedia project operated by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Many language versions of Wikipedia are free content, while others, such as the English version, include non-free material.[citation needed] As of November 2007, Wikipedia had approximately 9.1 million articles in 252 languages, comprising a combined total of over 1.41 billion words for all Wikipedias. The English Wikipedia edition passed the 2,000,000 article mark on September 9, 2007, and as of November 20, 2007 it had over 2,095,000 articles consisting of over 902,000,000 words.[1] Wikipedia's articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world and the vast majority of them can be edited by anyone with access to the Internet. Steadily rising in popularity since its inception,[3] it currently ranks among the top ten most-visited websites worldwide.[4] Wikipedia's name is a portmanteau of the words wiki (a type of collaborative website) and encyclopedia. Its main servers are in Tampa, Florida, with additional servers located in Amsterdam and Seoul. The Wikimedia Foundation has announced that it plans to move its headquarters from St. Petersburg, Florida to San Francisco, California in February 2008.[5] Critics have questioned Wikipedia's reliability and accuracy, citing its open nature.[6] The site has been criticized for its susceptibility to vandalism, such as the insertion of profanities or random letters into articles, and the addition of false or unverified information,[7] uneven quality, systemic bias and inconsistencies,[8] and for favoring consensus over credentials in its editorial process.[9] Wikipedia's content policies[10] and sub-projects set up by contributors seek to address these concerns.[11] Scholarly work suggests that vandalism is generally short-lived[12][13] and that Wikipedia is generally as accurate as other encyclopedias.[14] In addition to being an encyclopedic reference, Wikipedia has also received major media attention as an online source of breaking news as it is constantly updated,[15][16] having some 6.8 million registered users worldwide, although only a small part is consistently active. When "You" was awarded Time Person of the Year 2006, praising the accelerating success of on-line collaboration and interaction by millions of users around the world, Wikipedia was the first particular "Web 2.0" service mentioned, followed by YouTube and MySpace. http://www.top-1000.org/index.php?a=stats&u=wikipedia