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Xanga (IPA: zæŋgə) is a website that hosts weblogs, photoblogs, and social networking profiles. It is operated by Xanga.com, Inc., based in New York City, USA. Users of Xanga are referred to as "Xangans". Xanga's origins can be traced back to 1998, when it began as a site for sharing book and music reviews. It has since then evolved into one of the most popular blogging/networking services on the web, with an estimated 27 million users worldwide. As of May 3, 2006, Alexa Internet rated Xanga the 21st most popular English-language website, and the 42nd most popular website in the world.
Overview Xanga is a free Web-based service that hosts weblogs, photoblogs, and social networking profiles. Each site is officially called a "Xanga Site", commonly referred to as "Xangas". The sites are used largely by teenagers. Users are allowed to post any number of weblog entries per day, and they may post comments on other people's journals. Users may also customize how their Xanga looks using pre-made templates or custom HTML (sometimes known as Xanga skins or layouts). Xanga journals are used for many purposes, most commonly as personal journals. Core Features All Xanga members receive a "Xanga Site", a website made up of a weblog, a photo blog, a video blog, an audio blog, and a social networking profile. Weblogs The frontpage of every Xanga Site is a weblog. Xanga first added weblogs to all Xanga Sites on November 5, 2000. Comments were added shortly later, on December 8, 2000, along with a social currency known as "eprops". Comment Tracking followed on January 18, 2001. A core part of the Xanga experience is the ability to subscribe to Xanga sites. Subscriptions allow Xangans to stay up-to-date on other Xangas to whom they're "subscribed," and bring the latest blogs from selected Xangas to the user without having the user manually visit each site. Xanga first added an email subscriptions feature on November 30, 2000. On January 17, 2001, this was followed by the ability to subscribe to a site using a web-based reader (and the ability to display your 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. Subscriptions were originally called "Sites I Read," so some older users sometimes refer to them as "SIR". Photos Every Xanga Site also contains a 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. This was followed in August 5, 2005, with the beta release of a new Photo Manager that allowed users to more easily edit and view their photos. On August 30, 2005, Xanga announced that all premium members would now get a gigabyte of photo storage. 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). On September 28, 2005, moblogging support was added. Xanga released its photoblog offering on April 6, 2006; the ability to comment on photoblog posts followed shortly later on April 28, 2006. On May 18, 2006, Xanga introduced new tools that streamlined batch publishing to a photo blog. Profiles Every Xanga Site also contains a social network 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. 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 which 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. 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. 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). Video Blog Xanga Video Blogs were officially launched on August 9, 2006 with a video featuring Xanga employee Chris Choi's dog Gromit. Audio Blog On September 29, 2006, Xanga launched Audio Blogs after about a month of beta testing. Community Features Xanga supports several community features which allow members to form groups or find each other. Blogrings A Blogring connects a circle of Weblogs with a common focus or theme. All Xanga users are given the ability to create a new blogring or join an existing one. Blogrings are searchable by topic. A list of blogrings that the user is associated with appears in a module typically on the left side of the website. Each user is allowed a maximum of 8 blogrings. Blogrings were first launched on March 6, 2001. Originally, Classic members received only 4 blogrings, while Premium members received 7. Then on January 10, 2004, blogrings were relaunched and all members were allowed to have up to 8 blogrings. Blogring moderation was added on August 13, 2004, allowing Blogring leaders to moderate new members, delete unruly members, and transfer their blogring leadership. Metros A Xanga Metro is a feature that provides an indication of the geographic area where Xanga members live. Xanga limit metros to large metropolitan areas, for safety reasons. If you visit a metro, you can see a list of metro members who have updated recently. If you click of their names (or pictures), you will be sent to their site. Some Xangans leave comments on the sites of other Xangans in their metro whom they would like to get to know better. Xanga Metros was launched on November 10, 2004. Search Xanga supports real time search of recent blog posts. Members can also search of Xanga's Metros, Blogrings, and Users (including Usernames, Full Names, or emails). Because of privacy concerns, members are given the option of opting out of any Xanga Search features. Xanga first launched User Search on February 16, 2001. Overall blog search support followed on May 25, 2001, although this feature was restricted to Premium members only. Real time search of recent blog posts was first supported on August 23, 2005 using the open-source Lucene search engine. Search is no longer available only to Premium members only (all search is available free of charge to all members). Privacy Xanga supports several privacy features which allow users to restrict or control access to their sites. On April 26, 2006, Xanga launched Xanga Lock, a feature which restricted access to a given site to only other Xanga members. 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 only see 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. 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 optout for this feature, much as phone companies do for Caller ID. But users can visit xanga sites using Xanga Archiver to avoid being tracked. 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, and subsequently launched on May 1, 2006. Ratings To address the issue of clean content, Xanga has created a rating system that, among other things, limits access to age-inappropriate material. 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. Links to these safety tips were added to the bottom of every page on Xanga. 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. 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 tag (which Xanga banned in 2004 for being associated with advertisement removal). 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 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. 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. 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. Payment options for Premium have grown over time. When Premium first launched on May 1, 2001, Xangans could only pay for Premium 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. The Premium Plus plan was added on November 8, 2005. 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. Xanga ads first appeared on the site on May 30, 2001. On September 21, 2005, the ads were changed to a larger leaderboard format. Inappropriate usage Even though Xanga provides positive interaction between millions of users, inappropriate use of user blogs remains a large problem for the Xanga administration. In addition, 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. This has not sparked investigation by the RIAA yet, but widespread playing of music can end this. It is also stated that "distribution" of copyrighted material is not allowed without permission; however, slews of Xanga users specialize in finding uploaded audio other users may hotlink to. 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, atheletes, etc) and merely add text or other embellishments. The designers then stamp the image (banners, backgrounds, avatars) as their own copyrighted image. Users who copy designers' work and claim it as their own are called "jackers" (from the word "hijack"). The eventual confrontation often involves flaming. Xanga has not commented on the subject because layout designers are the actual copyright infringers. Some Xanga pages are entirely for the use of Pornography. These sites display naked pictures of themselves or others. The Xanga team has recently made efforts to fix the above problems. 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. However, there are some ways to bypass all javascript, such as using Xanga Archiver History of Xanga
Recent developments 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 (i.e. drinking, pornography). The word "Xanga" The word "Xanga" has also become a sort of vernacular for people who use it. 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.") "Xangarelics" is the term used by Xangans who have been around since the startup (Dec. 2000) to refer to themselves. In addition, the term "Xangaholics" will sometimes be used to refer to Xanga addicts. Xangaholics will often check their Xanga incessantly throughout the day. Others will sit on Xanga and wait for friends to update, so that they can comment on the latest post as well as learn what their friends might be up to. Some users attempt to fight off Xanga addiction by leaving a message that they've gone on "hiatus". Others will post without allowing eProps or Comments - or simply have a Xanga site, while refusing to post or activate their guestbook. Also, there is a degree of disagreement of how to pronounce xanga. Though the FAQ section of the official site states that Xanga staff pronounce it "Zan-Ga," other common pronunciations include... Criticisms Some users find the default Xanga interface rather regimented, and something of a sandbox environment. The interface does not parse some HTML code, and default site customization is essentially limited to editing content in pre-defined areas. Xanga users frustrated by this lack of options may decide their needs are better addressed by a site that uses software such as Movable Type or WordPress. Other Xanga users, however, overcome many of the default limitations through creative use of numerous available skins and layouts. 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. People who do not have a Xanga account cannot leave comments to a Xanga blog. Currently, Xanga does not have a plan to enable anonymous comments. Some users have worked around this problem using a third party Flooble Chatterbox, and others have implemented javascript that will let outsiders comment on individual entries (found here), but the question of outside comments appended to specific blog entries remains largely unsolved. It should be noted that while some Xangans consider this an undesirable restriction (lock out of nonmembers), others consider it a benefit (exclusiveness and obstacles to spam bots). | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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