Zorpia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Please help Wikipedia by adding references. See the talk page for details.
Zorpia is a free social networking website that offers unlimited photo storage, journals (blogging), forums, groups, user profiles, skins, e-mail notifications, and friend network. Members of the site are referred to as 'Zorpians'. Zorpia is similar to many other popular social networking websites, such as Myspace, Friendster, Facebook, xanga, hi5, orkut, Yahoo! 360° etc. The meaning of Zorpia has always been a mystery. People often discuss the origin of Zorpia in forums.
Zorpia’s major source of revenue comes from advertising. Zorpia’s advertising partners are Google, Yahoo, Revenue Science, Aptimus, AdBrite, Advertising.com, and Revenue.net.
Contents |
[edit] History
[edit] The Original Name of Zorpia
Zorpia was named Photopointz when the first project was just launched off in December 17, 2002. The initial project was based on a point system. The purpose of this system was to use suggested keywords to improve the photo search quality.
In summer 2003, Photopointz was officially renamed Zorpia. Several new features were also added to the website: journals (blogging), forums and friend networks.
In December 2003, Zorpia was finally completed and released to the public.
[edit] Jeffrey Ng - Founder & CEO
Jeffrey Ng is the founder of Zorpia. On his 20th birthday, he came up with the photo sharing idea because he realized that none of the photo sharing websites such as webshots, pbase, imagestation held dominance in the photo sharing industry at the time. It then became his first goal to create something extraordinary for photo sharing.
Jeffrey graduated from the University of Illinois with a B.S. degree in computer engineering. He worked for Expedia Inc for a summer internship as a program manager intern. Moreover, he worked for the National Center for Supercomputing at the University of Illinois as a search engine engineer.
As a guy who started building the website in his own basement, Jeffrey was constantly learning new ideas from his counterparts. The website’s membership rate started skyrocketing after he discovered and fixed a fatal bug. In early 2005, Jeffrey finally took off the point system after several major Usability Testing events. Other findings from the Usability Testing and the Zorpia forums also helped him develop several other features: skin feature and “Rate a Zorpian”.
[edit] Zorpia is the Window of the World
Zorpia offers free unlimited photo storage for every member. 16,287,269 photos were reported on December 1, 2006. The most popular photo album categories are:
- Personal
- Art
- Celebrities
- Comics
- Entertainment
- Interests & Hobbies
- Nature
- Pets
- Professional
- Schools & Organizations
- Sports & Recreation
- Travel
[edit] Zorpia community
A Zorpian is a member of Zorpia.com. There were 4,261,980 members recorded on December 1, 2006 in Zorpia.com. 80% of the Zorpians are active members. They are mostly distributed in USA, UK, Canada, Australia, India, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Mexico.
Like many groups of people, Zorpians seem to have adopted the term, in order to gain a sense of 'belonging'. They can be almost parochial in nature. The term is widely used in the Zorpia forums, where there is a strong sense of 'oldies' (long term members), and 'newbies'(new members - or maybe even just new to the community forums).
[edit] Controversies
Zorpians have uploaded photos of various types. Any adult-oriented photos that do not meet the Zorpia’s Terms of Service have to be deleted by the Zorpia administrators. There are disputes about how Zorpia administrators determine if the photo is indeed violating the terms. Disputes are often taken in forums. With a goal of protecting all the Zorpians, including teenage members, Zorpia insists to take strict actions in eradicating inappropriate contents from Zorpia in order to create a safe and enjoyable environment.
[edit] Rate a Zorpian
Rate a Zorpian is an activity affiliated with the photo album feature. Zorpians are encouraged to cast a vote on the randomly selected photos from other Zorpians. Also they can communicate with those Zorpians through commenting or visiting their homepages. The activity is so popular that it has become one of the most active features in Zorpia.
[edit] Privacy & Email Notification
Zorpia has the most exclusive privacy feature which allows Zorpians to privatize any part of their homepage or to set it visible to a specific group of Zorpians. The privacy feature is so detailed that it leaves much leverage for users to do exactly what they want.
E-mail Notification comes along with the subscription function. Zorpians are free to choose to receive subscription emails (about journals, photos, profile, etc) at a frequency (daily, instant or no email) of their own preference.
[edit] Features
- Photo Sharing: Users can upload unlimited amount of photos. Zorpians can leave comments or rating to the photos.
- Journal Sharing: Users can create journals or blogs to share ideas with their friends. They can link the journal to their photo albums. Zorpians can leave comments or rating to the journals.
- Forums: Users can express their ideas or opinions freely in discussions.
- Friend Network: Users can make new friends from all over the world or find old friends through the Zorpia network.
