myYearbook

MyYearbook.com is a social networking site similar to MySpace and Facebook that offers some unique features. The site is targeted mainly to young people of high school and college age. Users can perform all of the usual tasks such as upload pictures and videos, maintain a blog, chat with other users and share files and information. In addition the site has features like Battles, where users challenge other users for who has the best smile or who has written the best poem. Other features include Owned! where users purchase pictures of other users using “lunch money”, the currency used on the site. Match is a feature that allows users to search for users of the same age or with the same likes and dislikes. Quizzes allow users to post a quiz of some sort for other users to answer. The MyMag page is a page where users can consolidate all of the content that they like to view on a regular basis. MyYearbook is a large site with a seemingly endless number of activities. MyYearbook.com was founded in 2005 by David and Catherine Cook, two high school students, with the help of their older brother Geoff. Geoff Cook had already founded two sites in 1997, ResumeEdge.com and EssayEdge.com. The site was originally intended as an electronic alternative to the annual yearbook at the high school the two students were attending. Over time the idea caught on and spread, and now the site has millions of users. The Alexa page rank of the site is well below 500. Geoff Cook is now the CEO of the company. MyYearbook, as mentioned previously, is similar to MySpace and Facebook, but offers many more features. The site’s strong point is the number of different activities available on the site. The site is one of the top destinations on the web for teens aged 13 to 17. One weak point of the site when compared to it’s competitors is that it is very cluttered and navigation can be difficult, simply due to the fact that the site has so much to offer. MySpace and Facebook offer a cleaner, more polished look. As noted above, the site is very “busy”, with lots of links and content on each page. The site displays advertising as well. There are two menu bars on the site, one along the top of the page and a personal one that can be opened on the left-hand side of the page. Navigation is fairly intuitive, but there are an almost overwhelming number of items to choose from. The site is very responsive, with page loads happening quickly and the file upload and download speeds are quite fast. Registration is required for most activities on the site. The registration process asks for first and last name, date of birth, zip code, email address and password. Once the user submits these details they are prompted to find their friends on myYearbook from Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL Mail and Gmail. Next the user is prompted to upload a photo of themselves. Then the user is taken to their personal page, the MyStuff page. The registration process is smooth and glitch-free. Membership on myYearbook is free, but “lunch money”, which is required to use a lot of the activities on the site, must be bought (users can earn some lunch money through contests, etc.). Lunch money costs $9.99 for $1,000,000 worth. The site accepts Visa, Mastercard and American Express. Users can also pay with their cell phone account (via text message) or PayPal. The credit card process asks for full card information, including security code, and full billing address details. MyYearbook is recommended primarily to young people who need a family-friendly site to interact with their friends and make new ones. It offers all of the same features as MySpace and Facebook, and a whole lot more. The founders envision the site as a social network that users will continue to belong to as they grow older, so the site will likely evolve over time. For a young person, myYearbook is a good place to perform most of the actions that they perform online.