Free Community Websites and Free Blogging Sites are Helping People Connect with Others Who Share Their Interests.

Free community websites or weblogs are a great way for people from all over the world to have an instant presence on the web in a way that lets them share their thoughts, post photos, connect with others with common interests.

Many community websites or weblogs also let you share photos, audio clips, podcasts, and even video with other people through the world who delight in some of the same things you do.

The increasing use of "tags" or "categories" lets folks categorize their posts and photos and lets others with the same interests easily find them.

Here are some of the most popular free community websites:

More Free Community Websites and Weblogs That Let You Connect with Others with Common Interests

Gather "... is a place where you can share the things that matter to you with the people that matter to you, too. You can connect around a Supreme Court nominee, an Umbrian chicken recipe, a new album by Aimee Mann, or your child's soccer game. You can share your thoughts with the entire world, or exchange ideas, photography, audio (even podcasts), or video with just your friends, your family, or your work colleagues. You can connect with your book club, your PTA, your management team, or your committee to elect a new great leader in town on Gather. We will give you a place where your group can share information with one another or with the world.... And the dreaded question: how much does it cost? How about if we pay you for a change?..."

LiveJournal.com is a free open-source personal publishing or "blogging" software. There are many features including

• Current mood text/icon and your current music.
  • Polls that automatically tabulate votes.
• Per-entry security lets you restrict entries to just yourself or groups of your friends.
• Comments on each entry support paging and threading (comments replying to other comments).
• A user profile includes:
  • A mini-biography.
  • A list of your interests, another way to find other users.
  • A link to our text message gateway that won't reveal your cell phone number.
  • Who you've befriended, who's befriended you.
  • What communities you read and participate in.
• Fully integrated photo storage with basic image and photo editing.

MySpace "... is an online community that lets you meet your friends' friends. Create a private community on MySpace and you can share photos, journals and interests with your growing network of mutual friends!"

• Friends who want to talk Online
• Single people who want to meet other Singles
• Matchmakers who want to connect their friends with other friends
• Families who want to keep in touch--map your Family Tree
• Business people and co-workers interested in networking
• Classmates and study partners
• Anyone looking for long lost friends!

TagWorld "...is helping build the Social Web by providing a unified set of easy-to-use, web-based services that will let users create and engage in a more meaningful, social experience..." via "... five fundamental components for building out this new social web infrastructure: people, photos, blogs, tags and storage."

"TagWorld is an online ecosystem that provides the most comprehensive and tightly integrated set of publishing, communication and networking features to support and enable the social web. Its cross platform functionality supports users' migration toward the social web, where they can engage, create, and share their personalized content online in a multitude of ways, for a more meaningful social experience."

Strictly personal use. Does not allow advertising.

Xanga.com Free weblog community.... a community of online diaries and journals.

ZoomShare.com

• Free web site hosting with no pre-set bandwidth limits
• No banner ads or pop-ups on your web pages
• Post and share digital photos
• Publish thoughts in your blog and our forums
• Get listed in our community and classified directories
• Add a chat room to your site
• Choose from dozens of home page templates
• Includes one e-mail box with web-based access
• Easy-to-use – all you need is a web browser
• No billing information collected - your site is totally free

Free Sites to Share Your Photos

Flikr "... Flickr is almost certainly the best online photo management and sharing application in the world. Let us show you why!

Flickr is a way to get your photos to the people who matter to you. With Flickr you can:

• Show off your favorite photos to the world
• Blog the photos you take with a cameraphone
• Securely and privately show photos to your friends and family around the world
• ... and much, much more!"

See Also Free Photosharing Sites

Community Websites for Sharing Information

Instructables "... a community for showing what you make and how others can make it. Making things is part of being human. Whether you make bikes, kites, food, clothing, protocols for biology research, or hack consumer electronics, good instructions are critical. Instructables is a step-by-step collaboration system that helps you record and share your projects with a mixture of images, text, ingredient lists, CAD files, and more. We hope to make documentation simple and fast. Show your colleagues how to operate a machine, show your friends how to build a kayak, show the world how to make cool stuff. Instructables supports the principles of open source development to encourage sharing of ideas and information. ...."

More Ways to Live Large for Less:

Free VOIP  Talk for FREE over your broadband Internet connection using your regular phone.

Free Payday Loans  Get paid tomorrow instead of Friday. Your 1st loan is FREE.

Free Credit Report  Buying a new car or a home? Then you MUST check your credit report.

Free Laptop Computer  No kidding... there IS a way that folks are getting a laptop for FREE!

Free Satellite TV Installation  Get TV in 4 rooms for less than you're paying for cable.

Free Car  Learn how some folks are driving a car for free. Fascinating!