BlackPlanet

The website is run by Community Connect of New York City. Community Connect also runs AsianAvenue.com and MiGente.com [2] In April 2008, Community Connect was purchased for $38MM by Radio One, a Lanham, MD-based media begun by Cathy Hughes.[4] Along with BlackPlanet.com, MiGente.com and AsianAvenue.com were also purchased. This move was taken by Radio One to diversify beyond radio to reach black audiences. [5]

BlackPlanet's broader mission is to strengthen the Black community.[2]

The most popular forums were Current Events, Heritage & Identity, Relationships, Religion & Spirituality, and Women.[6] Wasow says BlackPlanet's home-grown software allows users to move between personal pages, to dating, chat, and message boards, focusing on connecting people, rather than feeding them content.[2]

Other features

BlackPlanet has recently introduced two interactive games for users, Farmandia and Fishdom.

BlackPlanet describes Farmandia as follows: "Farmandia puts you in the farmer's seat. Grow your produce, care for your animals and build your barns. The more you play, the more points you're rewarded so you can keep your farm in business. Need a little help? Invite other BlackPlanet members to lend a hand."[11]

BlackPlanet describes Fishdom thusly; "When you're done spending time on the farm, grab your virtual fishing rod and head to Fishdom where you're responsible for feeding your exotic collection of underwater friends. You better earn your bucks because they get mighty hungry. You never know when you'll need to purchase more food, accessorize your underwater kingdom or give your fish some new friends."[11]

The similarities to Facebook's Farmville have not gone unnoticed by the BlackPlanet users, who point out the need for improvement of the site's infrastructure and principal features such as chat prior to the introduction of games.[11]

BlackPlanet also introduced mobile apps in 2009 for mobile phones. The application BlackPlanetMobile was free when it was introduced but was not exclusive of mobile provider charges.[9] BlackPlanetMobile did not work on the BlackBerry, GPhone, iPhone, or Sidekick smartphones when introduced.[9]

BlackPlanet Text Alerts are also available to alert users to updates and notifications. This is an opt-in service.[9]

It has been stated that online social networks have come to define the modern Internet experience.[12]

BlackPlanet, as a precursor to Facebook and Myspace, has gone some way to influencing the Internet as users recognise it. Before today's popular networks allowed you to "like" posts, "poke" crushes, or "retweet" celebrities, web-savvy African Americans were connecting on BlackPlanet.[12]

Wasow himself has stated"[12]

The guys who started Myspace were quoted in Business Week magazine saying that they looked at BlackPlanet as a model for Myspace and thought there was an opportunity to do a general market version of what BlackPlanet was.

As of June 2007, BlackPlanet had 16.5 million members and 80 million page views. It was described as the largest online media entity for African-Americans and "the granddaddy of social-networking sites".[13] BlackPlanet enjoyed more than 6 million unique visitors a month in April 2008. In 2007, BlackPlanet found itself to be the fourth most popular social networking tool on the internet, but with the vast increase in Facebook, Twitter and MySpace usage, BlackPlanet fails to gain recognition in the top 15 social networks according to eBizMBA, in March 2011, leading critics to suggest that 'BlackPlanet has fallen to the wayside as other networks have taken the social network mantle.'[12]

BlackPlanet utilises other social networking tools such as Twitter and Facebook in order to reach new and potential users. Its Twitter feed is updated on a near daily basis, commenting and highlighting points of interest to the black community. Recent tweets include: "83% of BP voters think non-Black rappers shouldn't use the #nword... what do you think about that?"[14] and, "Weave secrets revealed. Go from drab to fab in 5 minutes."[14] The BlackPlanet Twitter feed is also used to post announcements and updates regarding the BlackPlanet site itself. Wider political issues are also mentioned, including: "What will you do #ifgovernmentshutsdown?"[14]

The BlackPlanet Facebook page is used to encourage discussion of issues both directly and indirectly applicable to its community of African-American users. The Facebook status update feature is used to ask questions to the page followers, and is well responded to in general. Questions have included, "What do you think of the idea of Black Marriage Day?",[15] "What do you think of people using the term 'ghetto' when describing something that's not desirable?",[15] and, "Men, do you ever pamper yourself with a gentleman's facial, manicure or pedicure? Ladies, what do you think of men who take care of their skin and nails?"[15]

Both social networking tools are used to advertise the "Member of the Day" feature, drawing attention to the appearance of the chosen member. Accompanying a link to the member's profile is a short comment such as, "She's beautiful, she's single, she's our member of the day. Check her out",[14] and, "Still need proof that we have the prettiest members on the planet? You're welcome."[14]

Wasow says he occasionally gets questions about whether BlackPlanet is fostering racial separatism. "Voluntarily socializing with people who share your interests is what freedom is all about," he says. "Anybody can join any of the sites. We found we were not segregating the web."[2]

However, niche community tools such as BlackPlanet do host users who wish to promote separatism, such as gangs, and this has not gone unnoticed. "Gangs have had a presence on the Internet since its inception. This became noticeable during the 1990s when it became fashionable for gangs to use free webspace from internet service providers to put up their own gang webpage." Finding gangs on GeoCities, blackplanet, and especially Myspace, along with other internet service providers (ISPs), provided the foundation of what today is known as gang internet investigation, a specialized area of expertise in gang investigation.[16]

Gary Dauphin, an original employee of BlackPlanet, argues that while the ethnicity of the site's owners is important to understanding the site, owners of one ethnicity can sometimes serve an audience of another ethnicity. "BlackPlanet, where I got my start on the Web, was owned for most of its early life by a largely Asian American group, and I would venture that that period was the site's finest hour. The ownership wasn't African-American, but it did understand the underlying call to service implied in running an ethnic site, and moreover, they had high ambitions for their company as a Web community platform provider that raised the bar for BP overall."[17]

In October 2011, an anonymous model filed a federal lawsuit against BlackPlanet.com regarding a 2007 incident in which she was drugged and raped by two men who met the woman through the website. The two men (40-year-old Lavont Flanders, Jr. and 45-year-old Emerson Callum) were convicted by a federal jury in Miami in December 2011 of multiple sex-related and conspiracy charges and were sentenced to life in prison.[18][19] The woman alleges that BlackPlanet.com "failed to warn women about the dangers of sexual predators". The site's parent company told the Miami Herald it "vehemently" denies the allegations.[20][21]

In 2007, BlackPlanet was featured in the press when the U.S. Department of Defense or the Pentagon banned it amongst other sites in order to free up bandwidth, suggesting high usage levels. Other banned sites included: filecabi.com, Hi5, iFilm, Metacafe, MTV.com, Myspace, Pandora Radio, Photobucket, StupidVideos, and YouTube.[22] The Defense network contains more than 15,000 local and regional networks and more than five million computers in the grid.

BlackPlanet gained considerable publicity when Senator Barack Obama began using the site on October 5, 2007, during his presidential campaign bid. Within 10 days, he had gained nearly 200,000 friends. In an online poll conducted by the site, over 2/3 of BlackPlanet's online community stated their intention to vote in the 2008 election.[5] The media perceived this participation in a niche social networking tool to be a "smart move" by the Senator. On March 30, 2011, President Obama had 450,579 friends on BlackPlanet. The page continues to be updated with regular blog posts, but does not feature recent status updates.

BlackPlanet Rising is a BlackPlanet users' community project set up by the website to encourage community support and services by its members. As part of their mission they aim to motivate and involve individuals to participate in civic engagement.[23] BlackPlanet Rising hosts a blog which contains posts from BlackPlanet users. Featured authors are highlighted along with their contributions to the site.

• Blackvoices.com
• List of social networking websites

• Official website