At Star Reviews, we’re huge fans of blogging. In fact, most of us already have our own blogs that we don’t update nearly as often as we want. Maybe it was our own love of online journaling that helped us develop an interest in Xanga, another contender for best social networking sites on the Internet. Xanga members create online journals using text, photos, and videos, then share them with the rest of the world. We wondered how well the idea worked so we decided to give the service a look.
What’s New?
- Xanga Mobile – Have the latest updates from your favorite members sent directly to your mobile phone
Star Reviews Favorite Feature:
Eprops-Eprops are a way for users to let you know they enjoyed one of your blog posts on the site. It’s an interactive way to say “great job.”
Xanga Features:
- Create your own online journal
- Upload photos, videos, music, and more
- Search for members by metropolitan area
- 40 million users around the world
About Xanga:
Xanga is actually one of the older social networking sites on the Internet. It launched originally way back in 1998 as a site for sharing reviews of music and videos. Today, the site focuses on giving the public a venue for posting their web journals, photos, videos, and music which they can share freely with other members.
Finding Friends at Xanga:
If you’re hoping to use Xanga to actively meet new people, then you may run into some troubles. Searching the site for specific people doesn’t seem to be the best option. You can search using tags (single words or phrases, such as “goddess” or “Japan”) but that won’t be very useful. You can also do a basic search of the site for a name or a keyword, but the results are so plentiful and so often not relevant that you probably won’t find it useful. Another option is to use the Metros feature to look for members in your metropolitan area. One mid-size Midwestern city had more than 3,900 members, so it can be rather difficult to find certain individuals (if that's what you're interested in.)
Signing Up for Xanga:
To sign up for a Xanga account, you need to provide some basic information about yourself, including your username, a password for the site, your email address, and your birthday. After registering, you’ll be prompted to access your email account address book to find out which of your friends are already Xanga members and presumably so you can invite any who are not members. If you skip that step, you can begin creating your online journal. You choose a traditional, photo, or video weblog and a design for your page then you’re ready to add your first entry and share it with the Xanga world. You’ll also have a private page which will allow you to easily add features, entries, photos, music, and more to the site whenever you want.
Pricing & Ads:
Xanga’s basic services are free, but you will have to contend with ads on your page and limits on your customization options, storage, and other features. However, Xanga does offer two paid services – Xanga Premium and Xanga Premium Plus. With Xanga Premium, you can upload up to 99 profile pictures, have no ads on your page, use custom modules to make your page look unique, and more. With Xanga Premium Plus, you get the same features but with unlimited storage.
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Xanga – Free
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Xanga Premium - $4 per month, $15 for 6 months, $25 for 12 months, $100 for Lifetime
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Xanga Premium Plus - $7 per month, $24 for 6 months, $45 for 12 months
Customer Support:
As with the other social networking site reviews, we had to check out Xanga’s customer support. Not surprisingly, the site offered only FAQ’s and email support for their site. They did offer a large number of FAQ’s which were arranged in an easy to use manner. You can find what you wanted without doing too much digging. However, not all of the questions we had were answered by the FAQ’s.
We did use the Xanga contact form to send a question to the staff. We received a response a little bit later that same day which was friendly and personal...one of the first we've received that impressed us when compared to the competition.
Upside:
Free. Fast email response.
Downside:
Too much advertising. Hard to find new friends to connect with.
Summary:
To compare social networking sites, we have to look at how easy it is to find new people with whom you can connect. With Xanga, it isn’t easy. If you don’t already have an address book full of friends waiting to join Xanga or read your weblog, then you may be lonely until other members start discovering your online journal. To be one of the top social networking sites requires a little more than what Xanga offers. Most users would be better off choosing MySpace, Friendster, or similar sites for their social networking needs. However, if you like to write, blog or anything of the sort, you should give Xanga a try!