Five Potentially Addictive Websites
A woman using her computer, possibly for accessing one of the websites listed below
Ever since we discovered the Internet, the first thing most of us did was explore. Come to think of it, that’s the first think people did when they discovered they were alive and could walk too. They just went ahead and tried to discover everything that was around them. The thing about the web is that it’s really, really big. Seriously big. I can’t even put it into words. As a consequence, there’s an enormous number of websites that could offer a lot of valuable information, would seem fun or let you download something you might need.
Where not here to talk about all the sites on the web, which is better and which is not. We’re not going to talk about site designing and how some sites look many times better than others, although we might be back to do that as well at a later time. Right now we’re here to list several sites that proved highly addictive to a large number of people. For some of them, we can tell exactly what’s nice and addictive. For others, we don’t really get it but we’ll let you visit them and try and figure out why so many other people keep coming back. If you know more sites that would belong on this list, be sure to let us know in the comments below. If you’ve liked or disliked any of the sites we’re about to suggest, you’re also encouraged to leave any sort of feedback you think appropriate. As usual, we’ll start from the last.
You’d be surprised how many people spend a lot of hours browsing through this website. Also known as ONDT (and fans definitely know it for short), this site is the home of a large number of people who spend time talking about celebrity gossip and pop culture. Most posts on the site are taken from other major gossip blogs. Because it makes use of “user-generated” content, it picks up a lot of stories from sites like TMZ or Perez Hilton. You’ll get to see about 150 member posts on each given day. That’s more than enough for you to spend hours checking out what’s new. Then, after you’ve read the content you might as well take your time to comment on it. That’s what sites like that are all about.
Finally, you might want to check this one out and spend time reading the content because it’s definitely the best celebrity gossip blog out there. You’ll get to see lots of funny animated images everywhere, just so your extra entertained.
Youtube was formed by three former PayPal employees in the early months of 2005. Roughly two years later the video-sharing website was acquired by Google. It now operates as a subsidiary of the search engine giant. Ok, enough boring you with the details, most of you already know what YouTube is about. People can upload, share and view videos of their favorite artists, songs, sports and events. Since its start YouTube improved greatly. It now offers featured and trending sections of videos where you can check out what other people found interesting that day.
You’ll also get to see top viewed videos of the day, week and all time. A recommended for you feature will gather up all the videos you might want to see on the front page (based on what you’ve previously viewed). Slightly lower on the page you can see the most popular videos from multiple categories such as entertainment, music, news and politics, film and animation and more. You can either watch videos as an unregistered user or you can register and get a lot of extra features. When you’ve discovered multiple songs you like, you can form a playlist and just auto play it. That works quite well for people who prefer listening to music off of YouTube but have to manually change the song every time a track is over. Finally, you can leave comments on any video, like or dislike something and share anything you find on Youtube with friends. I’m guessing most of us found out about a lot of funny videos through this very popular video sharing website.
I’d really like to hear of someone who hasn’t heard of this popular site. It’s definitely on my list of sites to check on every single day. That’s because when we’re working, back home, with friends and family, sad, happy or neutral, we could always use a good laugh. If other funny photos are appreciated by some while others might find them silly, offensive or annoying, funny photos of cats have a special appeal because all cat lovers will definitely love them. I can’t count the times when I’ve received a “LOL” followed by a link to an icanhascheezburger photo. If you have any friends who like cats, you’ve probably experienced the same. Plus it was imperative that I fit this site in the top because I’ve always really, secretly wanted to embed a funny cat photo in an article.
The popular weblog now holds an impressive collection of lolcats (funny photos of cats with captions). The site was created in 2007 by Eric Nakagawa (aka Cheezburger) and his girlfriend Kari Unebasami (Tofuburger). Since 2007 this popular lolcat web destination reeled in a lot of traffic and has on occasion recorded as many as 1,500,000 hits per day. People can now rate any image with one or five cheezburgers. Those who feel creative can break away from their looking habits and actually contribute with an image. They’ll get a LOL builder, a captioning program that can be used to make captions on images you upload.
Much like Facebook, Twitter is a site that had to be added on this top 10 most addictive sites list. I for one will admit that I’ve avoided Twitter for a pretty long time since its launch, despite my friends trying to explain just how great it can be. It proves even more useful when you want to keep in touch with everything that’s going on in the world. Nowadays, as I open up my PC I’ll invariably open up Twitter in one of my browser’s tabs. I’ll just leave it open and check it from time to time. I’m not much of a talker but I’ve noticed a lot of people are. Those people are the ones who generally have Twitter on their mobile phones as well. They’re the ones who’d admit to feeling deprived and far from technology if they had to drop Twitter for three-four days in a row.
For those who aren’t familiar with the micro-blogging site that has a little blue bird as a logo, Twitter allows users to send and receive tweets, which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters long. Users can choose to follow people and other people will choose to follow them in turn. That’s how come every Twitter member will have a list of people he/she is currently following as well as a list of followers. What’s great about Twitter is that it’s extremely simple and to the point. There is no useless information or people going on and on, and on, about the same topics of conversation. You get to choose what info to see in your stream of tweets and you get to only click on links when and if you’re interested. We all know those people who start off talking about something and keep at it for hours. Twitter puts an end to all that. Everyone has to stick to 140 characters, so they have to get to the point.
A little part of me would’ve liked to put something less-known and more exciting on the first spot of this list, for the sole purpose of showing readers something shiny and new that they’ve never heard of. But in that case, that site wouldn’t be that popular anyway. Hence, on the number one position on this list lays Facebook, the leading social networking site in the world. The site was co-founded by current CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his college roommates (and Harvard computer science students) Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. In case you’ve seen the movie “The Social Network” you won’t need any more details on the history of Facebook. The movie can be considered an extra indicator for how popular Facebook has become.
So what’s so interesting about it? You can set up an account, add people to your friends list and then talk to them, share photos with them, engage in activities, games and more with them. You could be a social butterfly and add 1000 people within a day, whether you know them or not, you could only add the people you know from school, work and your childhood or you could even be the shy type whose friends list consists of fewer than 50 friends. While no one is forcing you to do or be anything, keeping things under a 50 friend list is somewhat impossible once people figure out you’re on the social network and you discover a whole bunch of pending invites.
Facebook currently has over 500 million members and is probably attempting to pull off a billion in the not so distant future. It has become so addictive because you won’t have to get up from your chair and take a trip across town to be able to talk to your friends. You’ll get to compare photos from your vacation and if you’re bored after all that, you could start playing Farmville and Mafia Wars or any of the other popular Facebook games that are addictive themselves. Just don’t get so addicted that you’ll spend half your work hours on Facebook. Someone will definitely figure out what you’re doing and you might then end up all day at home, with nothing to do other than check your friends’ updates about their cool jobs and vacation destinations. Oh yes, and according to Mashable, one third of women between the ages of 18-34 check Facebook first thing in the morning. That’s for you to get a clear idea of how addictive this social networking website really is.
