Not “The Best,” But “A List” Of Social Network Sites

Dec 17 2008

Posted at 12:07 am under best of the year, web 2.0

I posted awhile back about the different social networking tools out there.

These are web applications that let you create private (or public, though for educational uses I’m primarily interested in ones that allow you to create “walled gardens”) networks to share blog posts, images, videos, websites, and chatboard conversations. Vicki Davis calls it “educational networking” when it’s used for students and teachers to communicate with one another.

Steve Hargadon has also posted a list of many examples using this type of social network by teachers and students. Nik Peachey also has an excellent post on starting these kinds of networks.

Our International Sister Classes Project was considering using one but, for now at least, we’ve been using Edublogs for our Student Showcase. Ning is popular among teachers, but our district content filter blocks it.

There has been an explosion of these kinds of web applications over the past year. There are so many, and they all seem to so similar on the surface (at least to me), that I just don’t have it in me to do a true “The Best…” list ranking them.

Instead, I’ve decided to just reprint the list I made earlier in the year and add more that I’ve been “collecting.” These are the ones that I know of that appear to allow you to create some kind of private networking site where you can write blog posts, have chatboards, and share images and videos. If someone might be interested in doing a deeper analysis of them all, I’d love to share it here.

So here is Not “The Best,” But “A List” Of Social Network Sites:

Hyperweek

Social Go

Wiggio (Webware writes about it. It doesn’t appear to have all the features of the others listed here, but it appears to be extraordinarily easy to use. In fact, TechCrunch has just written about a bunch of new features it’s added.)

Spokt

Ning

Brica Box

Big Tent (Mashable has a post about it)

Lefora (here’s a post from Mashable about it).

Soceeo

Neetz (Free Technology For Teachers has a post on it)

I’ve added Jabbster to this list. You can read about it at Richard Byrne’s excellent blog.

Rrriple

Let me know if I’ve missed other sites, too.

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6 responses so far

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6 Responses to “Not “The Best,” But “A List” Of Social Network Sites”

Yann Motteon 17 Dec 2008 at 5:00 pm 1

Thank you for mentioning Webjam, already used by charities, students or brands to power communities with a purpose. Schools, teachers or students can use it to manage groups or better aggregate group activity like on http://www.webjam.com/branded_services/prototype. More examples on http://www.webjam.com/webjam/discover like charity http://www.webjam.com/luccaleadership

[Reply]
Daily Blog Post 12/18/2008 | Clif's Noteson 18 Dec 2008 at 6:30 am 2

[...] A List of Possible Classroom Social Networks [...]
oliveron 20 Dec 2008 at 1:22 pm 3

Thanks for including mixxt in the list. mixxt is used by clubs, students, brands, events and also whitelabel customers, who want a more powerful and completely independant version. At the moment we support the languages English, German, Polish & Turkish, but we will be adding more.

[Reply]
oliveron 20 Dec 2008 at 1:23 pm 4

Oh, and one more thing:

in Germany educamps and quite a few other education related groups are using mixxt, including complete schools, student groups, classes, professors and events.

[Reply]
Networking Sites with Potential for Education | The LTD Project Blogon 15 Jan 2009 at 9:20 pm 5

[...] Not “The Best,” But “A List” Of Social Network Sites (2008.12.17). [...]
Ericon 21 May 2009 at 7:49 pm 6

We appreciate the mention of GroupieGuide – the site is designed for ease of use, allowing a clean and professional site combined with more powerful collaboration tools over email.

[Reply]