Filed under: Web services
Five social networking sites to look out for
Reading a lot of articles about social networking, one gets the impression that the consensus is that MySpace is peaking. MySpace will ever die, I think, but whether it will be the destination it is now in five years seems doubtful. Right now no other site holds a candle to its critical mass, but that doesn't mean everyone else is resting on their laurels. Blogger Fred Stutzman has written an interesting article called Social Networking: Five Sites You Need to Know, in which he examines five of the most promising, but low-profile, contenders for MySpace's throne. On his list are Cyworld, with 90% penetration among South Korean youth, Bebo, which has 20 million registered users and is especially popular in the U.K., Hi5 with 40 million users and a strong presence in India, Faceparty, a long-established U.K. brand with 6 million users and an interesting monetization scheme, and XuQa, a service with just 1 million users aimed at the college set, which Stutzman describes as "purposefully racy, full of game-like features-an anti-Facebook." He concludes with some sound observations about social networking trends. If you're interested in social networking but as sick of MySpace as I am, it's worth a read.
With Halloween fast approaching, it's a great time to get in some practice defending your territory against zombies. In Graveyard Shift, you take aim at zombies and other creepy-crawlies, blasting them into splatters of cartoony green guts. It's a casual first-person shooter, and it's very easy to get the hang of - use the mouse to aim, click to fire. Graveyard Shift has at least 15 levels, and it might even have some secret stages I haven't unlocked yet.
They key to getting good at Graveyard Shift is learning to use ...
