Most people have heard the buzz words "social networking" and "blogs." The only social networks which is universally known even amongst those who don't utilize is it is MySpace. This might tempt some to think that MySpace is the best there is in social networking - however, it isn't. It somehow managed to garner a large following and as new people came on to the social networking scene the natural choice was MySpace - because it was where everyone else was. But other social networks offer cleaner interfaces with better features. One such example is Xanga.

    From a technical standpoint, I love that they are using ASP.NET to write the site, but you probably don't care about that - instead you want to know about Xanga's features. Well, of course it is free - aren't they all? Where Xanga really distinguishes itself is in its clean layout. Whereas MySpace is cluttered and difficult to navigate, Xanga has a clean and aesthetically appealing interface. The blog serves as the main feature of Xanga, but that's not to say that it doesn't go far beyond blogs. In fact it includes an amazing amount more.

    While MySpace has very limited image storage, Xanga has a humongous amount of storage for images available. You can literally store hundreds of photos on their site for free and organize them into photo galleries. Xanga also allows you to upload videos and audio files.

    Recently Xanga really branched out, offering many of the features that the other social networks have as main selling points. These included an extended profile section with scores of questions you can answer to give others a picture of who you are. They added a feature like MySpace's Friends feature, named Friends.

    While MySpace forces you to really hack their site to add a skin, Xanga is fully customizable and allows you to easily skin your entire look and feel of the site. One could go on and on about the features of Xanga - such as Footprints, Nudges, eProps, Tagging, Networks, Subscriptions, and BlogRings, but I'll stop there. Lets just say that Xanga is the best social network I am aware of. If you are looking for a social network to call home, set up a blahh blahh page at MySpace, but make your real home Xanga.