Nexopia
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| Nexopia | |
|---|---|
| URL | http://www.nexopia.com |
| Commercial? | Yes |
| Type of site | Social Networking, Forums |
| Registration | required |
| Owner |  Privately owned[1] |
| Created by | Timo Ewalds |
| Launched | February 2003 |
Nexopia.com is a popular Canadian social networking website based in downtown Edmonton which was created by Timo Ewalds. It is designed as a general interactive site for people aged 14 and up. 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.
Contents |
[edit] Site Creators
The site was founded by Timo Ewalds, a self-taught computer programmer who was born in the Canadian city of Edmonton. The site was started as a hobby project in Ewalds' basement but soon grew into a successful enterprise which now owns offices in the city's downtown core.
[edit] History
Nexopia evolved from the small community site called Enternexus.com, a built from scratch website[2]created by Timo Ewalds. An initial beta site limited to 70 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 Paypal 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
Over 95% of its users are Canadian and the site has become quite popular in western Canada, with over 1.3 million member accounts and over 500,000 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 user's page. Photos put on a user's 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 as well as the administrators of the website. They have the power to fully edit any forums that are created by plus users. They watch for posts containing nudity as well as any other post that is against Nexopia's terms of use.
[edit] Memberships
Users with free accounts have access to standard features such as forum posting, private messaging, user profiles with comments, photo uploading, a user blog and an image gallery.
Users paying a subscription fee gain access to extra features such as advanced user search, forum creation, various customization options, increased photo uploads and image gallery capacity, online file storage, and the elimination of ads.
[edit] Picture rating feature
Nexopia.com once allowed members to rate other members' photos on a scale of 1-10.
As of a few years ago, picture rating is no longer available due to less than 5% of the userbase using the feature.
Thus feature is called Nexopia Plus, and costs about 5.00$ a month.
[edit] References
- ^ Alexa listing
- ^ Admin Zone Forums - View Single Post - What is the most scalable forum today?
- ^ Admin Zone Forums - View Single Post - How long did the '1000 members' milestone take you?
- ^ Admin Zone Forums - View Single Post - Most new members on one day
- ^ Admin Zone Forums - View Single Post - How much bandwidth have you used so far this month?
- ^ 2checkout.com - Using Them? - Admin Zone Forums
- ^ Sharing my little secret - Admin Zone Forums
- ^ 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.
