akaneon is an Internet social network service run by social network guru Craig From MySpace. The site is in the same vein as Friendster, MySpace and orkut, but goes a step further in terms of actual user abilities. The idea and primary purpose is, as stated by the webmaster, to "fight spam without imposing unnecessary restrictions upon users". They have made a committment to give users unlimited messages, comments, friend requests, bulletins, and other uses of the site, as opposed to the current message/friend request restrictions imposed by MySpace, Tagworld, Facebook and other similar sites. The site also uses open source technology and advertising is primarily purchased by users, as opposed to the sites previously mentioned which use advertising companies/scripted ads. Contrary to popular belief, the site is NOT intended to compete with MySpace, as the 'open advertising' schematic and the allowances of open inside linking and outside linking illustrate. Users can and are encouraged to use HTML code to openly link to their other social websites and other relevant content. The only banned forms of content are: Porn/Graphic Sexual Content (banned for obvious reasons), Pure Spam (user accounts created simply for the purpose of marketing goods and services), and Hate Sites. Other extremities are bannable at the webmasters discretion. Overall though, the purpose and design of the website were created to allow open linking for users without having to spam their sites on other networks. However, akaneon is NOT a spam site and people caught flooding, spamming or promoting illicit content will be instantly deleted.

History

Akaneon was launched on Aug 29, 2006 and entered the open phase on Sep 9, 2006. The site was quickly noted for being very active by percentage in comparison to other social networking websites. By Nov 1, 2006, the site had already gained over 5000 members without any promotion or advertising on the major search engine networks. A scan of the site shows that on a weekly basis, 81% of those people log on for at least 3 hours a week, a record amongst social networking sites.

Features

Akaneon gives users the ability to send as many messages, comments, and friend requests as they want, which it touts as its primary feature. However, it also includes customizable mp3 players using the open source xspf player script, videos, games, a centralized chatroom, a list of all current users friend request links, an open promotion/promotion discussion forum, a referral forum, a 'battle' system for having user photos compete against eachother, a fully functional search section, a ranking section for photos, a complete gallery of all user images, an instant messenger script for chatting with your friends in real-time, and more. More features are added gradually as the site progresses. Soon, users will be able to purchase banner space at a fraction of what the major services charge and 'lock in' their prices. Also, email accounts for the site are being developed so that users will be able to have their own email in the style of (usernamehere)@akaneon.com.

See also

List of social networking websites

Social network

Business network

Social software

External links

[2097] - Official Akaneon.com Website

MySpace profile of Craig, creator of Akaneon

del.icio.us listing for www.akaneon.com