Top Six Sites On The Web

’Sola Fagorusi
| credits: File copy

Remove the web and all its content from the world of today and our continents may be in commotion. That is how well our reliance on virtual space has become. Information and the speed at which it comes is the currency of the moment and nations that matter have a tab on happenings in cyberspace, using it for predictions and, where possible to increase the country’s Gross Domestic Product.

Online transactions are fast becoming the trend. Alexa ranking is the popular means of determining how well an online platform is doing. Alexa.com is the site where this measurement occurs and it would be a smart mischief to ask how Alexa itself is doing on alexa.com. It was acquired by amazon.com in 1999 even though it was founded by two American webepreneurs in 1996.

It reportedly has rankings on about 30 million websites and it offers information on website visitors’ behaviour, morphing it into web circulation report. It takes its name from the ancient Library of Alexandria; one of the largest libraries of the earliest world located in Egypt.

Google: It has all the answers! 

The World Cup is over but the amazing Google doodles of that period remain fresh in mind. Google doodles are those changes made to the Google logo in celebration of holidays, anniversaries, events and the lives of famous artists, pioneers and scientists who have helped shape history. As expected, on the global top list is google.com. Google’s ownership is the famous story of Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who started to organise information and make it globally useful. They met while at Stanford University trying to bag a Ph.D. The company is based in California, USA and after 16 years of operation, it’s the world’s number one search engine with several other products and acquisitions it has made over the years.

Android’s continued development is one of the businesses of Google. It would certainly seek to play more roles in our lives in the coming years. Expectedly, Google has good presence in Africa, a continent where the market is still young and the potential for expansion is good. It has a little over 50,000 staff globally.

Facebook: All the faces in one book! 

Also based in California, Facebook is ranked number two on alexa.com. The platform which clocked 10 this year has seen a rapid expansion and it still has Mark Zukerberg playing the role of the Chief Executive Officer. Unlike Google, its own start-up story is linked to Harvard University where the idea was first mooted. Simple to use, Facebook allows people to connect with one another after a profile has been created and then images, updates, messages and videos can be shared.

With a population of users almost equal the population of India. Facebook is the most successful of social networking sites of all time. Originally launched as thefacebook.com, Facebook continues to grow daily and its incursion into mobile online messaging, following its recent acquisition of Whatsapp, hints at the chances that it would be around for a long time. Its daily activities are dependent on the about 6,800 employees in the company’s fold.

Youtube: Get in the tube yourself! 

Until YouTube came, it was a big deal to produce and broadcast video content. Acquired by Google in 2006, YouTube was created by three workmates at paypal.com. YouTube brought liberty to video content sharing. Its initial use was by individuals, but seeing what is possible on the platform now, there is no news station worth its onions that is not on YouTube.

On YouTube, it is safe to say there is a video about everything under the sun. YouTube videos can be embedded on any webpage as is seen on most websites. The company has a culture of releasing an April fool prank every April 1st and it has done that for seven years now. Revenues for the site, just like others, are also through advertising with registered uploaders taking 55 per cent of the revenue. YouTube is currently censored in a number of countries and is known to experience heavy censorship during uprisings, given its role at making audio-visual information readily available.

Yahoo: Yet another hierarchical officious oracle! 

One of the earliest providers of free email services, Yahoo has been around for 20 years now and it is also based in California. With about 12,000 employees, Yahoo, which was founded by Jerry Yang and David Filo, was meant to be a web directory of sort. Its acronym ‘Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle’ is a clear indication. At the turn of the decade, Yahoo was the first site website Internet users learnt to visit. A multilingual interface, Yahoo still retains its directory service. It also has a search engine component, Yahoo news, groups, answers and a number of other services. The story of the Internet cannot be complete without a mention of Yahoo.

Baidu: The Google of China! 

China remains the world’s most populated country with its about 1.35 billion citizens. Baidu is a Chinese language search engine. Based in Beijing, it is the only foreign web platform on the list of top five on alexa ranking. Now in its 14th year, Baidu offers multimedia content and also has huge compatibility for searches from mobile devices. Baidu has about 34,000 employees and competes with a number of other platforms; prominent among them are Yahoo! China, Microsoft’s Bing and Google Hong Kong. It is thought to be in collaboration with the Chinese government to ensure censorship. Baidu Japan is also used by a sizeable number of people in Japan. Baidu encyclopedia is reputed to be China’s largest encyclopedia given its web traffic.

Twitter: 140 characters and nothing more! 

Twitter is ranked 7th by alexa.com. The micro-blogging site as it is called allows users to share thoughts in 140 characters. These characters are called tweets while a user’s identity on Twitter is called a handle. Based in San Francisco, it is called the SMS of the Internet and activism and advocacy are more agreeable with Twitter than with any other social networking site given the hashtag feature. Now eight years old, Twitter is run by about 3,000 employees and it has an interesting and tumultuous conception, already captured in the book – Hatching Twitter. Twitter’s handle is interestingly not the most followed on Twitter; it is rather arguably currently that of actress Katy Perry.