Nexopia

Nexopia

The logo of Nexopia
Type of business Joint Venture, Corporation
Type of site
 Social Networking, Online Forums
Available in English
Founded February 2003 (2003-02) Edmonton, Alberta
Headquarters Edmonton, Alberta
Toronto, Ontario
Area served Western Canada[1] Main (2003-2012)
Worldwide (2012-present)[2]
Owner Ideon Media
Founder(s) Timo Ewalds
CEO Kevin Bartus[3]
Key people Dave Stevens, Boris Wertz
Employees 10; As of 14 November 2008
Parent Ideon Media[2]
Slogan(s) Because your mom’s on Facebook[5]
Website Official website
Alexa rank Negative increase 302,023; (As of 2 June 2016)
Registration Required
Users 1.4 Million users[7]
200,000 active; As of 9 November 2012
Launched February 2003 (2003-02)[2]
Current status Active

Nexopia is a Canadian social networking website created by Timo Ewalds. It was designed as a general interactive site for people aged 14 and up, but the age limit recently was lowered to 13.[9] 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. In November 2012, Nexopia was acquired by digital ad network Ideon Media.[10]

History

Founded in 2003, Nexopia was Canada's first online social network.[2] Nexopia evolved from the community site called Enternexus.com, a website built by Timo Ewalds. This initial beta site was limited to 70 members and eventually led to the website Nexopia.com. When Enternexus.com was relaunched as Nexopia.com, initial growth was said to be 100 users in four days, and 225,000 users within 22 months[11] For a brief period during that time, Nexopia.com maintained a level of growth of 10% or 3500 average new members per day.[12]

In October 2010, the site had just under 1.5 million users and nearly 35 billion hits. As for January 2012, the site reports 1,636,990 users and 35,517,895,992 hits. That means a growth of roughly 140,000 users in just under 14 months, which is about half as many new users in half the amount of time as when the site started. In other words, the site is still growing by nearly the same amount of users per year as it was since its inception.

The website initially had problems using PayPal as a payment method for their premium service (Plus) reportedly due to their demographic and issues with stolen credit cards.[13] It now uses Interac Online, a service that allows account holders at participating banks to make payments online through online banking.

The website has also been the target of hackers and has been targeted by Distributed Denial of Service or DDoS attacks at least twice in its early days.[14]

Website changes

Nexopia launched an update to its user profile pages, the largest revision since the site's launch in 2003. The redesign includes a streamlined layout, Ajax controls for messages, galleries, and profile editing, new profile skinning options, and image resizing.[15] The update to the website has caused much controversy among users due to recent issues. Such as slow load times, profile pictures being deleted or not uploading, private messages not being sent, forms not working correctly, and people angry simply because the site design was different. Nexopia staff had recently set up a poll asking what users disliked most about the new Nexopia site design. After finding that the majority of users disliked the new profile picture slider the most, Nexopia staff decided to provide the option to switch between the classic profile picture viewer and the new improved profile picture slider.[16]

Forums

The Forums are the main social aspect of the website. Nexopia 'Plus' subscribers 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. In Early 2016 the website changed to an online forums.[17] The forum uses software from XenForo;[18] before the change WordPress was used.[19]

Members

Over 95% of its users are Canadian with over 1.4 million member accounts and over 200,000 active users and a hit count of over 33 billion.

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. Alcohol is also accepted. Any other controlled substance (heroin, cocaine, or any other classified "hard drug") is not allowed. All profile pictures are checked by specially appointed photo moderators 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 copyright infringement, presumably in fear of litigation. Over the last few years Nexopia has come under fire[20] from various hardline parent groups who blamed many of their children's problems on the website and tried to have it 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.[21] Students from the Elk Island school district used Nexopia to create profiles of their teachers in which classmates posted defamatory, silly, derogatory, and libellous information on the teachers' pages.[21]

Criticism

The website became a prime target for online predators.[1][22][23] Since a user's profile can be completely open to the public, all the profile images and information are view-able. Users often post personal information like their address, mobile telephone number, family members, relationship status, and what school they attend.

Online spam has increased such as through "dummy" accounts which have created that send spam messages to users, linking them to websites containing pornographic materials or malicious information. The Plus feature was recently introduced into the Mac's Convenience Stores.[24] As convenient as it may seem, a lack of staff knowledge and availability has led to the Plus feature being pulled from Macs locations. Users who do not follow the rules may get a simple ban from the website or have their account "frozen".

In March 2012, the website founder was found to be in violation of federal privacy laws, because it keeps personal information indefinitely.[25] As of November 2012, Nexopia is working with the Privacy Commissioner to ensure regulatory compliance.[10] As well the website was used by the now convicted serial killer, Cody Legebokoff. Who met the victim fifteen year old Loren Leslie, online on the website.[26]

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. Monthly paid subscriptions are offered at $5 to fee gain access to extra features such as advanced user search, forum creation, increased media gallery capacity and online file storage, and the removal of ads.

References

  1. 1 2 "Police track suspects using Nexopia website". Canada.com Postmedia Network Inc. Starphoenix (Saskatoon). 27 July 2007. Retrieved 25 April 2016.
  2. 1 2 3 4 "Canadian Social Networking Pioneer Nexopia Acquired by Digital Ad Network". Techvibes. Techvibes. 9 November 2012. Retrieved 25 April 2016.
  3. ↑ Powell, Chris (19 March 2014). "Ideon Bets Big On Moms With New Acquisitions". Marketing. Rogers Media Inc. Retrieved 25 April 2016.
  4. ↑ "Anything goes on Nexopia". Edmonton Journal. Canada com. 14 November 2008. Retrieved 25 April 2016. It's late Tuesday night and two teenage boys are comparing bongs in Nexopia's drugs forum.
  5. ↑ Koul, Scaachi (14 August 2012). "Nexopia is an online utopia for teens". Rogers Media. Macleans. Retrieved 25 April 2016.
  6. ↑ "Nexopia.com Site Info". Alexa Internet. Retrieved June 2, 2016.
  7. ↑ "About Nexopia". Nexopia. Nexopia. Archived from the original on 29 April 2015. Retrieved 25 April 2016.
  8. ↑ Lewis, Rob (9 November 2012). "Canadian Social Networking Pioneer Nexopia Acquired by Digital Ad Network". Techvibes Business. Techvibes. Retrieved 25 April 2016.
  9. ↑ "Nexopia Terms of Use". Retrieved January 25, 2013.
  10. 1 2 Lewis, Rob. "Canadian Social Networking Pioneer Nexopia Acquired by Digital Ad Network". Techvibes. Retrieved January 25, 2013.
  11. ↑ "How long did the '1000 members' milestone take you?". The Admin Zone Fourms. Nexopia Enthusiast. 12 December 2004. Retrieved 25 April 2016.
  12. ↑ "Most new members on one day". The Admin Zone Fourms. Nexopia Enthusiast. 29 January 2005. Retrieved 25 April 2016.
  13. ↑ "2checkout.com - Using Them? - Admin Zone Forums". Theadminzone.com. Retrieved 2016-04-25.
  14. ↑ "Sharing my little secret - Admin Zone Forums". Theadminzone.com. Retrieved 2016-04-25.
  15. ↑ "Nexopia Update". Techvibes.com. 2008-09-08. Retrieved 2016-04-25.
  16. ↑ Option to switch between picture viewers Archived February 2, 2009, at the Wayback Machine.
  17. ↑ "If you had an old account at the OLD OLD Nexopia, you can get that account back by resetting your password.". Nexopia. Nexopia. 10 February 2016. Archived from the original on February 10, 2016. Retrieved 25 April 2016.
  18. ↑ "Current Forums of Nexopia". Nexopia. Nexopia. Retrieved 25 April 2016.
  19. ↑ "December 2015 Wayback machine". Web Archive. Nexopia. Archived from the original on December 8, 2015. Retrieved 25 April 2016.
  20. ↑ 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.
  21. 1 2 "Four students expelled for cyberbullying (2:40 p.m.)". edmontonjounal.com. Retrieved January 25, 2013.
  22. ↑ "Nexopia predator does get light sentence". Retrieved January 25, 2013.
  23. ↑ "Montreal man who used Net to lure girls gets parole". Retrieved January 25, 2013.
  24. ↑ "Nexopia expands to the corner store - Techvibes Blog". Techvibes.com. 2008-10-21. Retrieved 2016-04-25.
  25. ↑ "Nexopia social network found in breach of privacy law". CBC.ca. Retrieved January 25, 2013.
  26. ↑ Keller, James (2 June 2014). "Cody Legebokoff Trial Hears Victims' DNA Found On Suspect's Belongings". Huffington Post. Retrieved 5 June 2014.
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