W43 Things was a social networking service established as an online goal setting community. It was built on the principles of tagging, rather than creating explicit interpersonal links. Users created accounts and then listed a number of goals or hopes; these goals were parsed by a lexer and connected to other people's goals that were constructed with similar words or ideas. This concept is also known as folksonomy. Users could set up to 43 goals, and were encouraged to explore the lists of other users and "cheer" them on towards achieving their goals. In 2005, 43 Things won the Webby Award for the best social networking service.[3]
W1000Memories was a website that let people organize, share, and discover old photos and memories and to set up family trees. It was shut down in late 2013 after an acquisition by Ancestry.com.
WAdvogato was an online community and social networking site dedicated to free software development and created by Raph Levien. In 2007, Steve Rainwater took over maintenance and new development from Raph. In 2016, Rainwater's running instance was shut down and backed up to archive.org. In October 2017, S. Ye took over from a backup copy in 2016 to re-enact a running instance for other researchers still interested in mod_virgule.
WAmie Street was an indie online music store and social network service created in 2006 by Brown University seniors Elliott Breece, Elias Roman, and Joshua Boltuch, in Providence, Rhode Island. The site was notable for its demand-based pricing. The company was later moved to Long Island City in Queens, New York. In late 2010, the site was sold to Amazon who redirected customers to their own website.
WAmunzi was an African-based social networking service launched on October 24, 2012, owned and operated by XyPNET Limited. The goal of the site was to unite Africans, make it easier for Africans to meet and learn about their different cultures, people, places etc.
WGadu-Gadu is a Polish instant messaging client using a proprietary protocol. Gadu-Gadu was the most popular IM service in Poland, with over 15 million registered accounts and approximately 6.5 million users online daily. Gadu-Gadu’s casual gaming portal had some 500,000 active users at the end of March 2009. Users send up to 300 million messages per day.
WBolt was a social networking and video website active from 1996 to 2007 before reopening in April 2008. It was shut down for a period of one year due to copyright violations leading to bankruptcy. It was acquired by new owners on January 4, 2008 and operated successfully for several months before announcing plans to go offline in October 2008.
WCake Financial was a free web-based financial services social network for individual investors allowing members to share their real stock portfolios and performance with other members. The site was introduced publicly on 17 September 2007, at the TechCrunch40 Conference, by Founder and CEO, Steven Carpenter. The company also had a Cake Investment Club application on Facebook. Cake had generated media coverage from a number of financial news outlets such as Forbes, Kiplinger, BusinessWeek and Barron's. Cake was backed by Alsop Louie Partners, as well as from angel investors. The company was located in San Francisco, California.
WChime.in was a social networking service and Web site launched in October 2011, operated and privately owned by UberMedia. Unlike most social networks, Chime.in is organized around subjects instead of people. The website is designed as a place to learn and share with other people who have similar interests. Chime.in lets users share content with others through a number of different mediums. It has a newsfeed, profile pages and a system for following other users.
WThe Daily Jolt (2000–2010) was a large and robust network of online campus-specific community and news sites. It was founded by Amit Gupta, Noah Winer, and Seth Fitzsimmons at Amherst College. A site for Brown University was started by Mike Goelzer shortly thereafter, both which remained the most active school portals in the system during the decade it remained in business. At its peak, there were sites for more than 100 college campuses in the United States and Canada. The Daily Jolt was run by student volunteers at each school, known as "Jolters", and supported by a small staff located in Boston, Massachusetts.
WDailyBooth was a photoblogging website designed for users to take a photo of themselves every day with a caption, in order to document and share their life with others, thus the slogan "your life in pictures." It was similar to social-networking websites such as Twitter in that you could follow other users and allow them to follow you in turn and get real-time updates on what other people are doing. The user base was geared towards teens.
WDipdive was a social networking website created by will.i.am. It was best known for the original source site of the "Yes We Can" music video. The site allowed users to upload images, videos and audio files, post blog entries and create playlists. Dipdive was home to variety of creative content and social causes.
WeConozco was a Spanish language social networking service aimed at professionals in Spain.
WEyegroove was a social media service headquartered in San Francisco for creating short music videos with augmented reality effects founded by Scott Snibbe and Graham McDermott. The company was established in 2013 and released the first version of its app on iOS that year. Through the app, users could create thirty second creative and lip-syncing music videos and choose musical tracks to accompany them, use different speed options and add time-based augmented reality filters and effects. The app's social media features included an Instagram-like feed, hashtags for creative memes, user tagging, and comment threads.
WFitFinder was a social networking website primarily based in the United Kingdom. FitFinder is described by its creator, Rich Martell, as localised anonymous microblogging. FitFinder is based on the concept of anonymously posting both a location and description of an attractive person whom one has spotted; this post is then immediately placed on the FitFeed, where it can be viewed by anyone.
WFriends Reunited was a portfolio of social networking websites based upon the themes of reunion with research, dating and job-hunting. The first and eponymous website was created by a husband-and-wife team in the classic back-bedroom Internet start-up; it was the first online social network to achieve prominence in Britain, and it weathered the dotcom bust.
WFriendster was a social networking service based in Mountain View, California, founded by Jonathan Abrams and launched in March 2003. Later the company became a social gaming site based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Before Friendster was redesigned, the service allowed users to contact other members, maintain those contacts, and share online content and media with those contacts. The website was also used for dating and discovering new events, bands and hobbies. Users could share videos, photos, messages and comments with other members via profiles and networks. It is considered one of the original social networks.
WGrono.net was a social networking service based in Poland. It was referred to as "the Polish equivalent of Facebook" and had over 2 million members.
WHeello was an online social networking service and microblogging service launched in August 2011, and owned and operated by Heello Inc. Heello enabled its users to send and read text-based posts and to share pictures and videos. Heello was founded by Noah Everett, exactly one day after Twitter rolled out its official photo-sharing app. Heello is financed by the money generated by TwitPic through online advertising. Within the first day, there were about average 4 Pings a second. On 12 August 2011, Noah Everett reported that Heello had reached 1 million Pings in just 2 days.
WHyves was a social networking site in the Netherlands with mainly Dutch visitors and members, where it competed with sites such as Facebook and MySpace. Hyves was founded in 2004 by Raymond Spanjar and Floris Rost van Tonningen. The service was available in both Dutch and English.
WIbibo Group is an online travel organisation founded in January 2007 by Ashish Kashyap. The company is a subsidiary of MakeMyTrip (MMT) Limited, which owns a 100% stake in Ibibo Group.
WIdeaPlane was an enterprise social networking platform targeted at companies in heavily regulated industries such as financial services. With expertise in compliance, IdeaPlane's platform was tailored to keep companies compliant with the regulations set forth by organizations like the U.S. Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Financial Services Authority and U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Witsmy was a mobile social gaming network that allowed users to communicate with each other while playing games. It was owned by Gofresh, a company located in Munich, Germany. At its height, the network had more than 2½ million mobile phone users worldwide. The network was available in English, German, Italian, and Spanish.
WiWiW was a Hungarian social networking web service which started on 14 April 2002 as WiW. As of August 2007, it had 2.6 million registered users with real names. Every user could provide personal information such as the place they live, date of birth, schools and universities they attended, workplaces, interests and pets. One could find friends by a search tool or looking through one's acquaintances' acquaintances.
WJaiku was a social networking, micro-blogging and lifestreaming service comparable to Twitter, founded a month before the latter. Jaiku was founded in February 2006 by Jyri Engeström and Petteri Koponen from Finland and launched in July of that year. It was purchased by Google on October 9, 2007.
WJiepang (Chinese: 街旁; pinyin: Jiēpáng) was a Chinese social networking service for mobile devices, such as smartphones. Users can download the Jiepang app to track and share life moments with friends. In July 2013, Jiepang launched an all new design in version 5.0, which evolved from its origins as China's leading location-based service (LBS) for the "check in". Jiepang helps users record and track all of their life activities, connect with friends in specific moments and explore communities of people that have similar interests.
WLockerz.com was an international social commerce website based in Seattle, Washington. In July 2011, the site claimed to have 19 million members in 195 different countries.
WMatchmaker.com was the first online dating service. It was founded in 1986 and first operated via a bulletin board system.
WMe2day (Korean: 미투데이) was a microblogging and social networking service in South Korea acquired and owned by NHN Corporation. Similar to Twitter, Me2day was popular in South Korea with earlier establishments in android market, especially among adolescents and youth of twenties. Me2DAY had an open API and most of the applications built around it added entertainment benefits to the site. OpenID was available until March 2010, but since then until the site's closure at the end of June 2014, registration was required. Information acquired during registration included only email address, ID, and password. It allowed users to send and receive up to 150 characters to each other. Many people like Big Bang, Wonder Girls, 2NE1, F(x), 2PM, Kim Tae-hee, SHINee, U-Kiss and Seoul Samsung Thunders used the service as a way of keeping their fans updated about their whereabouts. Because Me2day was run by the NHN Corporation, the creator of one of the biggest Korean portal websites Naver.com, a Naver ID user could also immediately set up an account for Me2day without signing up.
WMeerkat was a mobile app that enabled users to broadcast live video streaming through their mobile device. Once signed up, Meerkat users had the option of connecting their Facebook and Twitter accounts, to stream directly to their followers as soon as they went live. The app was available for both iOS and Android.
WMobli was a social mobile photo and video-sharing website founded by Israeli entrepreneurs and brothers Moshe and Oded Hogeg. As of 2016 the service was shut down and the company placed into bankruptcy.
WMSN China was a joint venture of the global software corporation Microsoft, part of its MSN service, located in the People's Republic of China. Unlike most other international versions of the MSN portal, which have used the same layout as the United States since 2014, MSN China utilized a unique design and had a separate editorial division.
WMultiply was a social networking service with an emphasis on allowing users to share media – such as photos, videos and blog entries – with their "real-world" network. The website was launched in March 2004 and was privately held with backing by VantagePoint Venture Partners, Point Judith Capital, Transcosmos, and private investors. Multiply had over 11 million registered users. The company was headquartered in Boca Raton, Florida but moved to Jakarta, Indonesia early in 2012 and recently announced intentions to switch to e-commerce, dropping the social networking aspect entirely. Quantcast estimates Multiply had 2.47 million monthly U.S. unique visitors at their peak on July 30, 2012.
WMyMFB was a Muslim-oriented social networking website. It was launched in May 2010 in response to a controversial group on Facebook entitled Everybody Draw Mohammed Day and Pakistan's block of Facebook in response.
WNetlog was a Belgian social networking service targeted at the global youth demographic. On Netlog, members could create their own web page, meet new people, chat, play games, share videos and post blogs.
WOrkut was a social networking service owned and operated by Google. The service was designed to help users meet new and old friends and maintain existing relationships. The website was named after its creator, Google employee Orkut Büyükkökten.
WPath was a social networking-enabled photo sharing and messaging service for mobile devices that was launched in 14 November 2010. The service allows users to share up to a total of 50 contacts with their close friends and family. Based in San Francisco, California, the company was founded by Shawn Fanning and former Facebook executive Dave Morin.
WPiczo was a social networking and blogging website for teens. It was founded in 2003 by Jim Conning in San Francisco, California. Early investors included Catamount, Sierra Ventures, U.S. Venture Partners, and Mangrove Capital Partners.
WPlanetAll was a social networking, calendaring, and address book site launched in November 1996. It was founded by a group of Harvard Business School and MIT graduates including Warren Adams and Brian Robertson. Their company, Sage Enterprises, was based in Cambridge, Massachusetts and was the winner of the 1996 New Business of the Year Award from the Cambridge Chamber of Commerce.
WPosterous was a simple blogging platform started in May 2008. It supported integrated and automatic posting to other social media tools such as Flickr, Twitter, and Facebook, a built-in Google Analytics package, and custom themes. It was based in San Francisco and funded by Y Combinator.
WPownce was a free social networking and micro-blogging site started by Internet entrepreneurs Kevin Rose, Leah Culver, and Daniel Burka. Pownce was centered on sharing messages, files, events, and links with friends. The site launched on June 27, 2007, and was opened to the public on January 22, 2008. On December 1, 2008, Pownce announced that it had been acquired by blogging company Six Apart, and that the service would soon shut down. It was subsequently shut down on December 15, 2008.
WSo.cl was a social networking service and social search engine operated by Microsoft FUSE Labs. They announced on March 7, 2017 that it would be closing down So.cl on March 15, 2017.
WStudents Circle Network was a global social networking service for university and secondary school students that provided over 10,400 academic courses of various levels from over 200 OpenCourseWare members worldwide, as well as study groups in various academic disciplines with online chat, and social-network games. The platform was an OpenCourseWare consortium member.
WTalkbiznow was a business networking site Founded in 2008 and launched in August 2008, the site is a web-based business community and collaboration tool that provides business services for small businesses and professionals. Talkbiznow has been featured in the San Francisco Chronicle, Design Week, Sky News, The Financial Times, The Guardian, Times Online, Forbes, Fox Business Network, and The Daily Telegraph.
Wtribe.net was a website that hosted an online community, or tribe of friends, similar to other social networking sites. The site name was always spelled in all lower case. As of February 2017 the site content is inaccessible and the site lacks a host.
WVine was an American social networking short-form video hosting service where users could share six or seven second-long, looping video clips. It was founded in June 2012; American microblogging website Twitter acquired it in October 2012, well before its official release on January 24, 2013. Videos published on Vine's social network could also be shared on different social networking platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. The Vine app was also used to try to browse videos, along with a group of videos that were uploaded by theme, and hoping that users could "trend" videos. Vine competed with other social media services such as Instagram and Pheed.
WWebChat Broadcasting System, or WBS for short, was a virtual community created during the 1990s. Supported by online advertising, it was one of few services at the time to offer free integrated community services including chat rooms, message boards, and free personal web pages. Extremely popular during the mid to late 1990s in the era prior to the Dot-com bust, WBS was the largest and best-known social media website of its time. In 1998, WBS was acquired by the search engine Infoseek, which was in turn acquired by Disney/ABC. The original WebChat Broadcasting System closed on 15 September 1999 after its chat rooms were integrated into Disney's existing Go Network chat rooms. A revival of WBS was launched in 2009 and is virtually identical to the original community.
WWindows Live Spaces was Microsoft's blogging platform and social network service. The site was originally released in early 2004 as MSN Spaces to compete with other social networking services, and re-launched in 2006 as a part of a shifting of community services away from the MSN brand. Windows Live Spaces received an estimated 27 million (27,000,000) unique visitors per month as of August 2007. Despite being considered a useful messaging and communication tool, Windows Live Spaces has been criticized as not being as powerful as some of its alternatives. It was shut down in 2011 due to low viewership.
WThe Witches' Voice (WitchVox) was an online information and networking resource for the Wiccan and Pagan community. It is a non-profit organization founded and run by Wren Walker and Fritz Jung in 1997. It won Peoples' Choice under Spirituality in the 2002 Webby Awards, and is considered one of the "most extensive" Pagan websites. The organization's website was retired in December 31, 2019.
WWorth1000 was an image manipulation and contest website. Worth1000 opened on January 1, 2002, and hosted over 340,000 unique images made in theme contests such as "Rejected Transformers", "Invisible World", and "Stupid Protests". In mid-2003, Worth1000 began hosting similar competitions for photography, creative writing, and multimedia. The service was shut down on 1 October 2013. In June 2014 the site was acquired by Sydney based crowdsourcing website DesignCrowd from Emerge Media.
WXfire was a proprietary freeware instant messaging service for gamers that also served as a game server browser with various other features. It was available for Microsoft Windows.
WYahoo! 360° was a social networking and personal communication portal operated by Yahoo! made available in 2005. It enabled users to create personal web sites, share photos from Yahoo! Photos, maintain blogs and lists, create and share a public profile and see which friends are currently online. 360° also featured a 'friends updates' section, under which each friend's latest update was summarized. This service was never officially launched; Yahoo! prematurely stopped developing this service in 2008.