Mixi

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mixi, Inc. TYO: 2121 is one of several SNS (social networking service) sites in Japan. The focus of mixi is "community entertainment", that is, meeting new people by way of common interests. Users can send and receive messages, write in a diary, read and comment on others' diaries, organize and join communities and invite their friends.

Started in February 2004, there are more than 5.7 million members and 490,000 communities as of November 2006.

• A community is a place for people to share their opinions through an online forum and a way to express tastes and hobbies.

• A footprint ashiato (足あと, ashiato^?) is a function that allows a user to see who has visited their page.

• mixi is an invitation-only service, meaning that one can only join via an invitation from a current member of the service. However, once invited, membership is free and open to anyone over 18.

• The word mixi is a combination of mix and I, referring to the idea that the user, "I", "mixes" with other users through the service.

• "Mixi Station", a client program that detects songs being played in ITunes and Windows Media Player and uploads them automatically to a communally accessible list in the "Music" section, was implemented late in June 2006. By July 2006, support for winamp was implemented via a winamp plugin, which was quickly made official by Mixi.

• Batara Kesuma was the only developer at the start of the social networking site.

• mixi heavily adopts the use of open source and several hundred MySQL servers.

[edit] See also

• List of social networking websites

[edit] External links

• (Japanese) mixi
• (Japanese) mixi, Inc.
• Flickr.com
• mixi Delivers Massive Scale-out with MySQL