KEY POINTS:
The question might horrify anyone aged under 20, for whom comments like "Are you on Bebo?" and "Oh yeah, I saw that on your Bebo page" are everyday phrases.
But some of the older generation remain in the dark - 15 per cent of the first 1000
people responding to today's poll on nzherald.co.nz had never heard of social networking sites.
Stacey Hunt explains all about the sites young people just cannot seem to live without.
What is it?
Providing a place where people can spend hours creating their own pages, finding friends, uploading photos and leaving comments for other people, social networking sites have attracted millions of users.
People can post blogs, leave messages for friends, upload photos and videos, adopt virtual pets, feed and play with friends virtual pets, give "luv", draw pictures on whiteboards and the list goes on.
What do you do there?
It is a place where young people can arrange what they are doing on the weekend, or chat about the nights homework as messages go up instantly.
The opening page called "changes", allows users to see any changes their friends have made.
If they have uploaded any new photos, become friends with someone else, created a quiz, changed their "relationship status" and so on, any of their contacts can see.
People choosing to make their page public open themselves up to any other member of Bebo being able look at their page and leave comments.
Everyone makes their page their own.
There is the background image, also known as the `skin', the opening blurb where users can reveal as much or as little as they like about themselves, the photo albums and the list of groups, clubs or bands they are members of.
What's the competition?
With all the social networking sites to choose from Bebo wins the popularity contest hands down.
It comes out on top as the most popular social networking site, followed by MySpace, Old Friends and then Facebook, according to July figures from internet analyst comScore.
Over the course of a month Bebo had 768,000 unique visitors with MySpace only reaching 194,00.
The popularity of the site with young New Zealanders is shown through a sneak peek at the CensusAtSchool results.
These results, so far, show that 48 per cent of students taking part have a Bebo page.
Bebo is also cited as number one in the top ten websites for both boys and girls.
The popularity of the site among younger users in general can be seen in a survey conducted by Bigulo.com.
Of the two million Bebo profiles surveyed, one in three publicly accessible ones belonged to children under the age of 18.
Within the UK, Bebo is the largest of these sites with 36 million global users.
Having joined into partnership with Microsoft Corp users can now export and import contacts between their Bebo site and contact lists maintained on Microsoft's Windows Live online services.
How long has it been around?
Founded in January 2005 by Michael Birch and his wife Xochi Birch, Bebo was designed to allow users to communicate in a variety of ways.
Given a major relaunch in July 2005, it has developed into an online community where users can do all kinds of things.
ComScore data shows that in July Bebo registered 10.7 million unique users.
MySpace was not far behind on 10.1 million, and Facebook was well behind with just 7.6 million registered unique users.
Social networking sites are not only for the young however.
While Bebo may be the popular site with teenagers, Facebook is appealing to the older generation with the fastest growing demographic for the site being in the 25 and over age group.
Bebo
Facebook
MySpace
Old Friends
