Xanga:

Xanga's origins can be traced back to 1999, when it began as a site for sharing book and music reviews. It now has an estimated 40 million users worldwide. As of May 24, 2008, Alexa Internet ranked Xanga as the 231st most visited site on the Internet.

Core features

All Xanga members receive a "Xanga Site", a web site made up of a weblog, a photoblog, a videoblog, an audioblog, a "Pulse" (mini-blog), and a social networking profile. Members also have the option of joining or making blogrings "groups".

Weblog

Xanga first added weblogs to all Xanga Sites on November 5, 2000. Comments were added soon after, on December 8, 2000, along with the concept of "eProps", which a user can give to another user's entry as a sign of how much he or she has enjoyed the entry. Two "eProps" is the maximum amount that can be given. (By default, "2 eProps" is selected on the comment page.) Comment Tracking followed on January 18, 2001.

A core part of Xanga is the ability to subscribe to other Xangas. Subscriptions allow Xangans to stay up-to-date on other Xangas to whom they are "subscribed", without needing to manually visit each site. Xanga first added an email subscriptions feature on November 30, 2000. ^[1] In January 2001, this was followed by the ability to subscribe to a site using a web-based reader using RSS (and the ability to display subscriptions on one's site).

Initially, Xanga allowed members to subscribe to each others' sites anonymously. Some users were troubled by anonymous subscriptions, and so during the week of July 15, 2003, support for this feature was discontinued. Since some users had been using anonymous subscriptions to try out subscriptions to other sites, on July 21, 2003, Xanga added a feature that allow members to sample a Trial Subscription to another site. This update also allowed member to hide individual subscriptions from public display. ^[2]

Subscriptions were originally called "Sites I Read", so some older users sometimes refer to them as "SIR".

Photoblog

That said, until the spring of 2006, Xanga's photo features were focused on enabling photo uploads within weblog posts. Xanga first started offering photo uploading on May 1, 2001. Originally, photo uploading was available only to premium members, and was limited to 20 MB of storage (although this was not enforced). Then, on April 7, 2005, Xanga overhauled its photo system to increase picture quality and picture size, as well as to increase capacity for the system overall. ^[3] This was followed, on August 5, 2005, with the beta release of a new Photo Manager that allowed users to more easily edit and view their photos. ^[4]

On August 30, 2005, Xanga announced that all premium members would now get a gigabyte of photo storage. ^[5] On September 9, 2005, web-based batch uploading of photos was added; on September 26, 2005, all Xanga Classic members were given 200 MB of free photo storage (and Premium members were increased to two gigabytes of storage). ^[6] On September 28, 2005, moblogging support was added. ^[7]

Xanga released its photoblog offering on April 6, 2006; ^[8] the ability to comment on photoblog posts followed soon after on April 28, 2006. ^[9] On May 18, 2006, Xanga introduced new tools that streamlined batch publishing to a photoblog. ^[10]

Some members have also chosen to post their entries entirely with pictures and photos. This has been made possible after the introduction to photoblogging.

Videoblog

Xanga Videoblogs were officially launched on August 9, 2006 ^[11] with a video featuring Xanga employee Chris Choi's dog Gromit.

Audioblog

On September 29, 2006, Xanga launched Audio Blogs^[12] after about a month of beta testing.

Pulse

On February 22, 2007, ^[13] Xanga introduced "Pulse", which was described as a "carefree miniblog". A Pulse message can also be uploaded by cell phone.

Profile

Xanga supported limited profiles as early as its launch in 2000. Profiles were revamped on February 1, 2004 to hold more information and offer better email security and control. Each member was allowed to upload one profile picture. On April 30, 2004, Xanga upgraded its profile image uploading to offer better quality images. ^[14] Then on July 27, 2004, Xanga followed up with multiple profile pics; classic members were allowed to upload up to 3 profile pics, while Premium members were allowed to upload up to 99 profile pics. Xangans were allowed to set a default pic that would appear next to their username, as well as choose between their profile pics in each entry. Then, on November 19, 2004, Xanga extended its support of multiple profile pics to comment icons; now Xangans could choose which profile pic they wanted to appear next to each of their comments. ^[15]

Then on April 6, 2006, Xanga upgraded its profiles to offer traditional social networking features - including the ability to connect with friends, to search for friends, and to fill out profile fields. ^[16] On June 6, 2006, a link to each users' Profile was added to the standard Xanga navigation at the top of every Xanga site (along with Photos). ^[17]

Other features

Private Messaging

Tags

Users are now able to tag a post with keywords, making it searchable by subject matter.

Languages

Xanga's pages can be displayed in some languages other than English. Currently, there are Chinese (Traditional), Chinese (Simplified), Spanish, Indonesian, Japanese, and Korean. Other languages might be added in the future.

Privacy and safety

Privacy

Xanga supports several privacy features that allow users to restrict or control access to their sites.

On April 26, 2006, Xanga launched Xanga Lock, a feature that restricts access to a given site to only other Xanga members. ^[19] If a casual web browser who is not logged in to a Xanga wished to view someone's Xanga, he or she would first have to log in to a registered account, or else he or she would see only a page indicating that that user has chosen to "lock" their Xanga. Xanga Lock also prevents the site from being indexed by Search Engines. Members can combine Xanga Lock with the Footprints feature to create a means of controlling and monitoring access to a given site.

On October 20, 2006, Xanga launched Friends Lock. This feature is similar to Xanga lock, but it provides even more privacy by allowing a user to lock out everyone who is not on the user's friends list. This feature is very similar to protected posting in many ways. However, unlike protected posting, a user can have as many friends as wanted without having to purchase Xanga Premium. Furthermore, a user can have friends who do not need to be on the user's Protected Post list.

Tracking

With Xanga Footprints, participating Xanga users can see the usernames of signed-in visitors to their site. If visitors are not signed in, then the Country or State is shown instead. Xanga supports an opt-out for this feature.

Flags

Xanga developed a flagging system that allow users to easily report sites that violate Xanga’s terms of use (such as sites that contain Threats of Physical Harm or Underage Nudity). Flagged sites are reviewed by Xanga’s employees and shut down as appropriate.

The flagging system was first proposed on April 19, 2006, ^[20] and subsequently launched on May 1, 2006. ^[21]

Ratings

To address the issue of clean content, Xanga has created a rating system that, among other things, limits access to age-inappropriate material. Xanga SafeBrowse, also known as Xanga Ratings, allows people to set their Xanga sites to one of five levels. A Xanga site set at the highest level (Explicit Content) can be viewed only after credit card verification. ^[22] The system is modeled after the movie ratings system.

Safety

On June 8, 2006, Xanga launched safety.xanga.com, a site with links to tips for parents, youth, and law enforcement. ^[23] Links to these safety tips were added to the bottom of every page on Xanga.

Reporting Inappropriate Content

A "Report Inappropriate Content" link is also found at the bottom of every page.

Design

Xanga has two primary ways that users can control the design of their Xanga Sites: Skins; and Layouts.

Skins

Xanga Premium allows for complete customization of a user's page using its Xanga Skins feature.

A Skin is a CSS stylesheet paired with HTML and Xanga's own language. This is differentiated from the templates used by Classic users, often referred to as "layouts" (but often confused with Premium skins). There is a specific page for adding skins, and some inexperienced users mistake this for the "Custom Header" and "Website Stats" for which Classic users can access. Xanga Skins and Xanga Layouts are not interchangeable. Others have created layout sites for others to access.

Layouts

In recent years, a cottage industry of layout design community sites has emerged. The large design communities are blogring.net and createblog.com (formerly xangans.com). Submitting to either one of the above sites exposes users to constructive criticism from other experienced users. There have also been the creation of guilds (more commonly called "collaborations") where veteran designers form a team to create layouts using each member's specialty. These collaborations involve small-scale message boards where they can receive feedback and a server host to host accessories such as banners and music.

Aside from layouts, Xanga users have access to almost unlimited design capabilities. Xanga Classic users can use all HTML properties, excepting only the <META> tag (which Xanga banned in 2004 for being associated with advertisement removal). <META> tags is one of the tags that page transitions can be made from. At the time of the ban, page transitions were at the peak of popularity.

A controversial issue among the layout community is the use of HTML encoders to scramble their codes. Since most Xanga users are Classic users, they feel that all scripts should be public domain. Xanga is one of the few blog/profile sites that allows the encoding property to work. The encoding property is not bound by Xanga's Javascript blocks, so a user may encode a <META> tag and place the encoded script into his/her blog and "trick" Xanga into thinking that it is a safe script. Thus being said, Xanga blogs have an infinite number of customizations, and this has led to a sense of uniqueness within the community.

Revenue

Premium subscriptions

Xanga also offers two levels of premium subscriptions: Premium; and Premium Plus. Members who subscribe to either service receive additional features, including additional photo storage and monthly uploads.

The Premium plan provides 2 GB of photo storage and 100 MB of monthly uploads while the Premium Plus plan provides unlimited photo storage and 1GB of monthly uploads. Premium members on both plans may also fully customize their site using skins, post entries to their site via electronic mail, and download archives of their entries. Pages of Premium members also do not contain web banners. Some other Premium features include a higher limit on profile pictures, a custom sidebar, and specialized page skins. ^[24]

Xanga Premium was first launched on May 1, 2001, largely consisting of 20 MB of photo hosting (although limits on photos were not enforced). A downloadable archive of entries and comments was added to the premium offering on May 10, 2001, while customizable Skins were added on February 15, 2002. ^[25]

Payment options for Premium have grown over time. When Premium first launched on May 1, 2001, Xangans could pay for Premium only with a credit card. Support for check payments was added on April 15, 2002, while support for PayPal was added on May 13, 2002. Support for gifting of Premium was added on December 23, 2001. ^[26] The Premium Plus plan was added on November 8, 2005. ^[27]

Over time, several Xanga features that were originally available to Premium members have become available to Classic members as well. These features include rich text editing of weblog entries, photo uploading, user blocking, and search. Xanga's classic members have applauded these moves; meanwhile, Xanga's premium members have expressed distress that previously paid features have become available for free.

Advertising

Xanga is largely supported by advertising, in the form of banner ads that appear on the top of most pages on Xanga. Sam Garland does most of the advertising for Xanga. Xanga ads first appeared on the site on May 30, 2001. On September 21, 2005, the ads were changed to a larger leaderboard format. ^[28]

The word "Xanga"

People will refer to their weblog as a "Xanga". The word "Xanga" is also used as a verb. (For example: "I'm going to xanga later tonight." or: "Oh, I haven't had time to xanga today.") In addition, the term "Xangaholics" will sometimes be used to refer to Xanga addicts. A yearly anniversary of one's Xanga site is called a "Xangaversary".

The FAQ section of the official site states that Xanga staff pronounce it "ZANG-uh". ^[29] Other known pronunciations that have been colloquially used include the following:

The CEO of Xanga, John, states in his profile that the word "Xanga" comes from a nickname he had as a child. "Xceptionally Awesome Ninja GangstA".

Timeline of Xanga

Inappropriate usage

Many sites have been created solely to express dislike or animosity towards others. These sites tend to attract retaliation in the form of negative or offensive comments, promoting hate-speak within Xanga. The Xanga Team has attempted to close such "hate sites" down, along with restricting members who misuse Xanga.

Although it is briefly mentioned in its About page, many users play copyrighted material without permission. It is also stated that "distribution" of copyrighted material is not allowed without permission; however, slews of Xanga users specialize in finding uploaded audio to which other users can hotlink.

Some users who have mastered basic HTML and CSS create more advanced and eye-pleasing templates for those who are less apt. These users are called "designers" or "layout coders". Xanga has not yet solved the problem of copyrighted images. Most of the designers use a generic search engine (such as Google Image Search) to find a picture of the defined theme (such as video games, music artists, athletes, etc.) and merely add text or other embellishments. The designers then stamp the image (banners, backgrounds, avatars) as their own copyrighted image.

Some Xanga pages are entirely for the use of pornography. These sites display naked pictures of the owner or others.^{[citation needed]} These sites violate Xanga's Terms Of Service, and the Xanga staff try to shut down those sites, as well as "hate sites"

Dangerous scripts

Xanga currently allows users to use JavaScript to customize their pages. Server side word filtering is used to detect dangerous scripts. It is claimed that the filtering can be bypassed by escaping the filtered text into Unicode and outputting the now scrambled script using JavaScript.^{[citation needed]} A series of filtering was recently implemented. Some functions, such as setTimeout(), which many people were using to remove the advertisements, have been overridden.

Incidents

Xanga users still in elementary or junior high school have been punished upon discovery of their personal pages. Usually, a threat against a teacher or classmate is made. Also, posters of Xanga may post photos of themselves, or others, performing illegal activity relative to their age (e.g., drinking, pornography).

Criticisms

Xanga has been criticized for giving its users too much flexibility, including the use of arbitrary JavaScript. This feature was used to mount a denial-of-service attack on Slashdot's search page in late 2004, causing intermittent errors. ^[39]

Xanga

Contents

Origins