http://www.myspace.com

People are connecting with each other on the Internet for many different reasons, and most of them can be done here. Myspace.com is currently receiving more page views than the popular Google search engine, around 10 billion per month. It is essentially a social networking base-station, a place to meet and connect with other people for any and every reason imaginable. At first it looks a little like a dating site, which is definitely a huge aspect of its existence, as romantic and intimate interaction is such a massive priority in the lives' of humanity. Where it goes a few large steps further is with its integration of communication mediums and networking tools. You can have your own blog, record your own MP3 music files, and even make videos for all of your 'friends' to check out. (If you want your movie or song to get out there, make as many friends as you can!) Each person's web pages can be creatively original in their own right which brings out the uniqueness of each personality. Friendship is the main driving force behind this postmodern 'movement'. On-line groups of friends who have connected because of similar interests (there are many different categories) get to choose who they want to share their information with, so in essence, you choose who you want to meet. It is working well, as is testified by over 20 million users currently joining every month.

One obvious impact that this site has had on social and economic structures is in the music industry. If you go to the 'music' category (thousands of groups of people into similar music are listed) you will find that many bands have put up pages offering a few of their songs to download for free. I'm not talking about famous bands that you hear on radio or see on TV (although they too are joining in- and getting better sales than ever before). I'm talking about no-name groups that we never would have gotten an opportunity to hear before. Without the aid of heavy marketing, airplay, and record label support, some bands are selling millions of records. This is totally knocking out the concept of the 'middleman'. Production and promotion costs are low, and revenue that used to be obtained from CD sales is now being made by merchandise that devoted fans are ready and willing to buy. To put it bluntly, these bands are giving up their day jobs and making a healthy living without the help of the mass-market and its Top 40 hit lists.



http://www.ebay.com

You've probably heard about how much money can be made on eBay. With dreams of quick riches and easy money, you are probably ready to jump in with both feet - right now! The best thing you can do if you are serious about making money with eBay, however, is to chill out. Being successful on eBay takes as much planning and effort as operating a business in the 'real world.'

eBay has over 100 million members. Think about that number for just a minute or two. When you get your eBay business set up, that is how big your customer base will be - instantly. 100 million people - 100 million people who are just waiting for you to get set up and running so that they can throw money at you! As in most cases, beware the law of large numbers. It is true that the reach of eBay is incredible, but at this point, the market doesn't know that you exist. In fact, no matter how well you do on eBay, most of them will never know that you exist. 100 million is a very large number.

The most successful eBay sellers started out as buyers - and you should too. This will give you a sense of how everything works. It will also show you how things are from the buyer's side of the fence. Let's call this period of time 'consumer research.' You are literally studying how eBay works, from a customer's point of view. You may not realize this, but this eBay buyer experience will actually make you a much better seller - right from the very start.

Really pay attention to the customer service you receive from the seller. Think about how you want to be treated as a buyer, and take notes. Take your time during this process. Interact with the sellers. Get involved in hot auctions to see what they are like. In your spare time, start making notes about the hot items that you see. These notes will come in handy later.



http://www.craiglist.com

Craigslist is a centralized network of online urban communities, featuring free classified advertisements (with jobs, housing, personals, for sale/barter/wanted, services, community, gigs and resumes categories) and forums sorted by various topics.

It was founded in 1995 by Craig Newmark for the San Francisco Bay Area. After incorporation in 1999, Craigslist expanded into nine more cities in 2000 (all of them in the U.S.), four each in 2001 and 2002, and 14 in 2003. As of June, 2006, Craigslist had established itself in approximately 310 cities all over the world.

As of 2006, Craigslist operates with a staff of 21 people. Its sole source of revenue is paid job ads in select cities ($75 per ad for the San Francisco Bay Area; $25 per ad for New York and Los Angeles), and paid broker apartment listings in New York City ($10 per ad).

It serves over 4 billion page views per month, putting it in 30th place overall among Internet companies world wide, 7th place overall among Internet companies in the United States (per Alexa.com on July 8, 2006), to 10 million unique visitors. With over 10 million new classified ads each month, Craigslist is the leading classifieds service in any medium. The site receives over 500,000 new job listings each month, making it one of the top job boards in the world. [1] The classified advertisements range from traditional buy/sell ads and community announcements, to personal ads and even "erotic services".

Although the company does not disclose financial information, journalists have speculated that its annual revenue approached $10 million in 2004.



http://www.wikipedia.org

Wikipedia is a Web-based free-content encyclopedia project. It exists as a wiki, a website that allows any visitor to edit its content. The word Wikipedia is a portmanteau of the words wiki and encyclopedia. Wikipedia is written collaboratively by volunteers, allowing most articles to be changed by anyone with access to the website. Wikipedia's main servers are in Tampa, Florida, the United States, with additional servers in Amsterdam, the Netherlands and Seoul, South Korea.

Wikipedia started as an English language project on January 15, 2001, as a complement to the expert-written and now defunct Nupedia, and is now operated by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. It was created by Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wales; however, Sanger resigned from both Nupedia and Wikipedia on March 1, 2002. Wales has described Wikipedia as "an effort to create and distribute a multilingual free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single person on the planet in their own language."[1]

As of August 2006, Wikipedia has more than 4,900,000 articles in many languages, including more than 1,300,000 in the English-language version. There are 229 language editions of Wikipedia, sixteen of which have more than 50,000 articles each. The German-language edition has been distributed on DVD-ROM, and there have been proposals for an English DVD or print edition. Since inception, Wikipedia has steadily risen in popularity,[2] and has spawned several sister projects. According to Alexa, Wikipedia ranks among the top 20 most visited sites, and many of its pages have been mirrored or forked by other sites, such as Answers.com.


http://youtube.com

YouTube was founded in February, 2005 by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim, who were all early employees of PayPal.Prior to PayPal, Hurley studied design at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Chen and Karim studied computer science together at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.The domain name "YouTube.com" was activated on February 15, 2005, with the website launching shortly thereafter. In November, 2005, venture capital firm, Sequoia, invested $3.5 million in YouTube.

Sequoia Capital partner Roelof Botha, former CFO of PayPal, joined the board of directors at YouTube. In April, 2006, Sequoia Capital invested a further $8 million in YouTube.

The site's popularity surged in December 2005 when it hosted the popular Lazy Sunday clip from a Saturday Night Live broadcast.

In February, 2006, NBC Universal asked YouTube to remove several copyrighted NBC video clips, including Lazy Sunday and 2006 Olympics clips, from their site.

On March 14, 2006, YouTube set a 10-minute limit on videos, except for those uploaded through its Director Program.

By June 2006, NBC had reconsidered its approach and announced a strategic partnership with YouTube. Under the terms of the partnership, NBC will among other things create an official NBC Channel on YouTube to showcase its preview clips for The Office. YouTube will also promote NBC's videos throughout its site.