Information About ™Xanga |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT XANGA | |
| 1998 establishments | |
| blog hosting services | |
| online social networking | |
| companies based in new york city | |
Xanga (, 2006 , Alexa Internet rated Xanga the 23rd most popular English-language website, and the 48th most popular website in the world. OVERVIEW Xanga is a free Web-based journal-hosting and social networking service. The journals are themselves usually called "Xangas", and each entry posted on one's Xanga is called a weblog. It is largely used by Teens , but is open to anyone at least 13 years old (though this rule is very often broken), mostly due to the COPPA . Users are allowed to post any number of messages per day, and they may post comments on other people's journals. Users may customize how their Xanga looks, using pre-made Template s or custom HTML (sometimes known as Xanga skins). Subscription lists, blog rings, profiles and other features implement a Social Network . Xanga journals are used for a wide variety of purposes, from personal journals to publicly insulting people the user is not fond of. Primarily monitored by the community, Xanga has a few administrators who handle violations. FEATURES Xanga offers both a free service (Classic) and a paid service (Premium and Premium Plus). All Xanga accounts are accessible via the username feature . One popular aspect of Xanga is the ability to customize the appearance of one's journal. Included with their free service is a basic layout formatter that allows non-HTML literate users to change their journal's layout and style, including colors and border styles. Those who do know HTML are able to include their own code within the page, allowing customization beyond what the basic layout system supports. Many other websites supply premade HTML "layouts" for Xangans to copy and paste into their "custom headers". In addition, Xanga offers a paid premium service offering many extra features. Pictures Classic users can have a maximum of three profile pictures, which are displayed next to their posts and comments, and mantained in their photoblogs. If a user decides to pay for the Premium service, the amount of user profile pictures are upped to ninety-nine. Xanga also offers over 200 MB of free space to upload pictures, with additional picture storage space available to Premium users. eProps In addition to comments, Xanga allows users to add eProps to encourage some users to post more. Usually, those who write what is considered interesting content build a large fan base behind them and thus accumulate more eProps. See also Xanga's explanation of an eProp. By default, you automatically give out 2 eProps with the first comment you make on a new weblog entry unless you specify otherwise. Because of this, most users of Xanga don't bother to worry about eProps and instead just focus on the comments. Commenting again on the same post does not produce more eProps, and neither does commenting on one's own post. For this reason eProps are usually used as a gauge of how many different unique users have commented on a post. The most commented and ePropped post ever, as of , 2005 with a total of 18,626 comments and 28,094 eProps. Subscriptions Subscriptions allow Xangans to stay up-to-date on other Xangas to whom they're "subscribed," and bring the latest blogs from selected Xangas to the user without having the user manually visit each site. Subscriptions were originally called "Sites I Read," so some older users sometimes refer to them as "SIR." Subscriptions also send your friends' posts to your e-mail. Some people have more than one site and have used a different e-mail address for each one, so if you have subscribed to the friend on one of your other sites with an e-mail address you do not check, you will ''not'' be able to get the subscriptions. Privacy Options Any Xangan can utilize a blocking feature to block other specifically-designated Xanga members from posting comments on his/her blog. This feature is often invoked as a response to offensive commenting behavior. There is also a feature called "Protected Posting" which makes it so that entries designated as "Protected" can only be viewed by Xanga members that are added by the blogger to his/her own protected list. (The Xanga Classic protected list can hold only up to 10 members; you must obtain Xanga Premium in order to get an unlimited list.) == Blogrings A Blogring connects a circle of Weblogs with a common focus or theme. All Xanga users are given the ability to create a new blogring or join an existing one. Blogrings are searchable by topic. A list of blogrings that the user is associated with appears in a module typically on the left side of the website. Metros A metro is a social networking feature that provides an indication of the geographic area where Xanga members live. Xanga limit metros to large metropolitan areas. If you visit a metro , you can see a list of metro members who have updated recently. If you click of their names (or pictures), you will be sent to their site. Some Xangans leave comments on the sites of other Xangans in their metro whom they would like to get to know better. Xanga Premium Xanga also offers pay services called Xanga Premium and '''Premium Plus'''. Members who subscribe to either service receive additional features, including additional photo storage and monthly uploads. The Premium plan provides 2 GB of photo storage and 100 MB of monthly uploads while the Premium Plus plan provides unlimited photo storage and 1GB of monthly uploads. Premium members may also fully customize their site using Skins , post entries to their site via Electronic Mail , and download archives of their entries. Pages of Premium members also do not contain web banners. Some other Premium features include: a higher limit on profile pictures, a custom sidebar, and specialized page skins. {Link without Title} INNAPPROPRIATE USAGE Even though Xanga provides positive interaction between millions of users, inappropriate use of user blogs remains a large problem for the Xanga administration. Many of the users of the site use their blogs to post inappropriate pictures. These pictures could range from child pornography to pictures of the deceased. In additon, there have been many sites created for the sole purpose of expressing dislike or animosity towards others. These types of sites tend to attract and retaliation in the form of negative or offensive comments, promoting hate-speak within Xanga. The Xanga Team has attempted to close such "hate sites" down, along with restricting other users who they feel misuse the Xanga environment. RECENT DEVELOPMENTS
HISTORY OF XANGA
OTHER The word "Xanga" has also become a sort of vernacular for people who use it. People will refer to their weblog as a "Xanga". The word "Xanga" is also used as a verb. (For example: "I'm going to ''xanga'' later tonight." or "Oh, I haven't had time to ''xanga'' today.") "Xangarelics" is the term used by Xangans who have been around since the startup (Dec. 2000) to refer to themselves. In addition, the term "Xangaholics" will sometimes be used to refer to Xanga addicts. Xangaholics will often check their Xanga incessantly throughout the day. Others will sit on Xanga and wait for friends to update, so that they can comment on the latest post as well as learn what their friends might be up to. Some users attempt to fight off Xanga addiction by leaving a message that they've gone on "hiatus". Others will post without allowing eProps or Comments - or simply have a Xanga site, while refusing to post or activate their guestbook. Also, there is a degree of disagreement of how to pronounce xanga. Though the FAQ section of the official site states that Xanga staff pronounce it "Zan-Ga," other common pronunciations include...
CRITICISMS It is alleged that in December 2000 Xanga sent thousands of spam messages from a Bianca Broussard to boost its membership numbers. This speculation eventually lead to the termination of "Bianca Broussard"'s xanga account, in response to the immense amount of discussion on the techniques in which Xanga attempted to recruit members. Some users find the default Xanga interface rather regimented, and something of a Sandbox environment. The interface does not parse some HTML code, and default site customization is essentially limited to editing content in pre-defined areas. Xanga users frustrated by this lack of options may decide their needs are better addressed by a site that uses software such as Movable Type or WordPress . Other Xanga users, however, overcome many of the default limitations by employing custom skins and through creative use of numerous available scripts. In late 2005, Xanga's decisions to give to classic (non-paying) users features that were once only available for Premium users and to introduce "Premium Plus"—that offers unlimited storage space and 1 gigabyte of monthly photo uploads—infuriated some Premium users. Many such users responded in comments to such announcements by saying that they felt cheated and that they had little reason to continue to subscribe to Premium. [http://www.xanga.com/Chris/383466882/introducing-premium-plus.html Another criticism is that, while Xanga does support RSS feeds via http://www.xanga.com/rss.aspx?user=username , its invalid code has caused problems including poor language support. (Example: failure to convert Chinese Big5/GBK to unicode, leading ordinary RSS readers to display meaningless symbols instead of Chinese characters). Many users are also unaware of the RSS feature because of a lack of publicity by Xanga. People who do not have a Xanga account cannot leave comments to a Xanga blog. Currently, Xanga does not have a plan to enable anonymous comments. However, some users have solved this problem using a Flooble Chatterbox. It should be noted that while some Xangans consider this an undesirable restriction (lock out of nonmembers), others consider it a benefit (exclusiveness and obstacles to spam bots). EXTERNAL LINKS
|
|
|