Social Site Review: Faceparty

Faceparty
Founded by Andrew David Bamforth and Phineas Kibbey in Autumn 2000, FaceParty is a social networking site aimed at dating. Since April 2008, Faceparty only allows new users to sign up if they receive an invite from existing members providing them with a password which is changed weekly.

Whilst most of the site is free to use, many of the features of Faceparty require Cool Tools which allows users to see who has been visiting their profile and rating them. Unlike the more widely used social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook and Bebo, users are required to pay an annual fee for these services.
Faceparty also offers its own 'Adult Verification System' (AVS) which allows users over the age of 18 to view restricted 'adult' content on other users profiles and this is charged as a monthly subscription.

I was a member of Faceparty in 2006, but haven't been an active member for over a year. On a recent visit to the site, I was quite surprised how much it has changed and wasn't surprised when I found that it had new owners: Anarchy Towers Ltd. Since, Faceparty has undergone many changes in a bid to become less corporate and "to return to its roots". The whole website has become a lot more 'hardcore' with phrases such as "Log ur ass on" and "Hurry on in. Check them darn msgs before the police come." I'm not entirely sure this has worked as the members it attracts haven't changed. New ownership also brought about...

• Staff levels falling from 18 to 4
  
• All advertising being removed, and it now relies solely on premium SMS income.
  
• The chatroom facility (Party Chat) being replaced by a forum entitled Gossip.
• A new chatroom (Chat 2.0) being introduced in a beta mode.

Faceparty has caused a lot of controversy and on a number of occasions, it has liaised with the police in connection to cases of rape and sexual abuse.

For one day only "On July 8 2008, Faceparty temporarily rebranded itself as "Dogparty". The entire site adopted a canine theme - male members were referred to as dogs and female members as bitches. Profile pictures of all members were replaced with photographs of various breeds, and numerous references to dogs appeared throughout the site. The shoutout box was replaced with the barkout box, for example. Members' ages have also been replaced with their "dog year" equivalents."

FaceParty uses aspx

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faceparty