Nexopia
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 Main page as seen by a logged in Plus user |
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| URL | http://www.nexopia.com |
|---|---|
| Type of site | Social Networking |
| Registration | required |
| Owner | Nexopia.com Inc |
| Created by | Timo Ewalds |
| Launched | August 2001 |
| Current status | Active |
Nexopia is a social networking website and is designed as a general interactive site for people aged 14 and up (accounts with users that are proven to be under 14 are deleted). Users are able to create and design their own profiles, friends list, blogs, galleries, articles, and forums. Interaction is accomplished through an internal personal messaging system, and public user comments on profiles, blogs or through threads and posts on the forums. Nexopia.com is a Canadian website and based in downtown Edmonton.
Nexopia is the largest online community of young people in Canada.[1]
Contents |
[edit] History
Nexopia evolved from the small community site Enternexus.com, a built from scratch website[2]created by Timo Ewalds. An initial beta site limited to 30 members led to the current website. Initial growth was as follows, 4 days to hit 100 users, and 22 months to hit 225 000 users.[3] A short period of time existed where the website was growing by 10% per day (3500 new users per day)[4] For the month of January 2005, bandwidth was estimated at 8-10 tera-bytes.[5]
The website initially had problems using pay-pal as a payment method for their premium service (Plus) due to their demographic.[6] The website has also been the target of hackers and has been shut down at least twice due to Distributed Denial Of Service or DDoS attacks.[7]
[edit] Members
Though users from all around the world can now be found on the site, over 95% of its users are Canadian and the site has become quite popular in western Canada, with over 1,000,000 member accounts and over 300,000 active users. During peak hours the site sometimes reaches over 30,000 users and several thousand guests online.
No nudity, racism, violence or gore are allowed in any of the forums or profiles, although photos of drugs are accepted only to a certain degree, and that degree is only a small amount of marijuana and the use of pipes and bongs. Any other controlled substance i.e. heroin, cocaine, or any other classified "hard drug" is not allowed. Alcohol is also accepted. All profile pictures are checked by specially appointed "pic mods" before being allowed up on a users page. Photos put on a users profile are not checked, but there is a "report abuse" button where another user can report anything that is not to Nexopia code of conduct. Nexopia also takes a hard stance against piracy, presumably in fear of litigation. Over the last few years Nexopia has come under fire[8] from various hard line parent groups who blamed many of their children's problems on the website and sought for it to be shut down. This has resulted in a policy change and forced Nexopia to be more strict about what users post on the website.
In March 2007, four students from Sherwood Park, Alberta were expelled from school and twenty given suspensions in a case of cyberbullying.[9] Students from the Elk Island school district used Nexopia to create profiles of their teachers in which classmates posted defamatory, derogatory, and libelious information on the teachers' pages.[9]
[edit] Forums
The forum system, among other things, has been custom designed to fit the large number of users. The forums include many official Nexopia forums, some regarding the websites functionality, while others are themed towards topics such as music or transportation, and some, such as User Topics, Teens, and Attention Seekers are non-specific to topic.
Aside from official forums, Nexopia Plus users have the option of creating their own forums, which can be open to any user or be a private forum that only invited members can view.
The forums are watched by specially chosen Global Mods aswell as the administrators of the website. The have the power to fully edit any forum that was end user created by plus users. They watch for nudity posts as well as any other situation that is against Nexopia's terms of use.
[edit] Memberships
[edit] Normal users
Nexopia offers a free normal account for users, normal accounts have the ability to use forums, send private messages, update profiles, change user interface skin, upload 8 pictures and also have a user blog and photo gallery.
[edit] Plus users
Nexopia also has an optional premium service. Nexopia Plus gives users extra features, such as an advanced user search, the ability to create a forum along with a custom forum rank, the ability to customize the colors of their profile, ability to choose whether or not to have iFrames in layouts, and the elimination of ads. Also, with Nexopia Plus, users can see who has visited their profile,and can have up to 12 pictures on their profile, thirteen if they have a verified photo, whereas members without Nexopia Plus can only have up to 8 pictures on their profile, nine if with verified photo. Users can also opt to be included as one of the randomly generated profiles that appear on the front page in the "Plus Spotlight" Section, where an image from the chosen user's profile, and a link to the user's profile is shown. This has been recently updated, and now depending on what resolution your screen is or what window size you have, it now shows multiple spotlighted people. Other features included with Plus are an advanced user gallery (regular users have galleries, but are limited to 20 pictures) and 10MB of file storage. Also, Plus users receive priority picture moderation, and customization features for their profiles.
The going rate for purchasing plus is as follows:
- 1 Month: $5
- 2 months: $10
- 3 Months: $15
- 6 Months: $20
- 1 Year: $30
The percentage of Nexopia users who have Plus is left to speculation, as the administration will not release this information. Around 40% of the those who post in the forums are plus members.[citation needed]
[edit] Advertising
Advertisements are shown at the top of pages on the website by default. Users with Plus membership have the option of turning off such advertisements. While the administration does not allow users to advertise or use explicit images throughout the site, some advertisers have come under question for some of the racier content that has appeared on the front page, such as ads to personals sites utilizing images of women in lingerie. Nexopia says that they are trying to put a stop to this, even though they have no control over what ads go onto the site, they request that if you see one of these ads, you report it.
[edit] Picture rating feature
Nexopia.com once allowed members to rate other members profile photos on a scale of 1-10. It was removed, official sources claim that this is due to the fact that less than 1% of users used this feature, but its removal coincided with most of the controversy caused by angry parents.
[edit] Notes
- ^ http://www.big-boards.com/highlight/856/traffic/
- ^ http://www.theadminzone.com/forums/showpost.php?p=32296&postcount=27
- ^ http://www.theadminzone.com/forums/showpost.php?p=39819&postcount=11
- ^ http://www.theadminzone.com/forums/showpost.php?p=35520&postcount=5
- ^ http://www.theadminzone.com/forums/showpost.php?p=48087&postcount=12
- ^ http://www.theadminzone.com/forums/showthread.php?p=36230#post36230
- ^ http://www.theadminzone.com/forums/showthread.php?p=34610#post34610
- ^ National. "Net holds dark hints on slayings: Pair accused in deaths of Alberta family posted messages on notorious websites". The Globe and Mail, April 26, 2006.
- ^ a b "edmontonjounal.com". Retrieved on 2007-03-22.
