This is my kind of site: practical, with no flashy design and an unfussy home page. Gumtree started life in 2000 as a “community site”, helping new arrivals in Britain to find accommodation, employment and even drinking buddies (or “social opportunities”), and it keeps on growing. Today, there are separate sites for Britain’s main cities and for Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Poland. If you’re new to a city, or want to do something different, start by consulting the local Gumtree. For London, this is now the biggest site for jobs and flat-shares (it delivered for me), and you can also buy and sell “stuff”, from concert tickets to Underground posters from the 1940s. It’s like the freesheet Loot, only more fun and much more interactive; and it doesn’t leave ink on your fingers. Everything you need is on the home page, and subscription is free. You can receive e-mail alerts, post your own ads (again, free) or make friends by venturing into the discussion area, which was a little disappointing — but then, aren’t most discussion areas?

MOVING UP IN LIFE
www.linkedin.com
Five stars

LinkedIn is the iPod of social networking websites: beautifully designed, visited by tech-savvy business types and urbanistas, and with a deceptive ability to store a mass of information. This “networking tool” for professionals claims to have 3.6m members worldwide, though it has only recently taken off among Brits. Whether you’re a graduate looking to get a foot on the career ladder or a boss on the prowl for staff or business partners, LinkedIn can make connections. Once you sign up (free, unless you opt for a Business or Business Plus account), there is a clear account page where you indicate what you are looking for — a job, firms to sell wares to, or the chance to reconnect with former workmates. Like an old boys’ network, it lets subscribers swap tips and messages through mailboxes. That means there is little on offer to the casual browser, though plenty of testimonials extol its ease of use, and I found feedback rapid. To benefit, you need to be driven by business and get stuck in.

ACTION FANS
www.lifeknot.com
Four stars

Just looking at this website was enough to make this deskbound caffeine addict feel knackered. It targets people who want to make friends on the basis of shared hobbies and interests, but the only activities depicted on the home page are those normally seen in Hollywood movies or ads for sanitary towels: all people leaping off cliffs, kayaking down raging rivers or skiing on scary mountains. Behind the “Yo, dude!” exterior, however, there are more than 850 activities to choose from, as diverse as hang-gliding, banjo- playing, pub crawls and watching television. After joining — a more complex task than it should be — you can select activities and join e-mail discussions with 10,000 other members. Lifeknot makes a refreshing change from networking or dating websites based on random connections between individuals who use clichés to define themselves. You feel that contacts made on the basis of shared interests, fulfilled in the real world, have a chance of lasting.

The late American writer Susan Sontag argued that the growth of photography showed people had a “chronically voyeuristic relation to the world”. She wouldn’t have liked Flickr, because it gives you a space in which to upload photos for family, friends and Flickr’s 1.5m members to view from anywhere in the world. There are currently 48m photos on display, from blurred holiday snaps to highly creative photography. That’s a terrific feat. However, I was less convinced by the claim that the site enables “virtual conversations”. (The online magazine Salon celebrates the “unlikely communities that spring up around a wild universe of images”.) There are worthwhile collections, such as the one that sprang up after the London bomb blasts, yet the “conversations” are often mundane, such as “What I had for lunch” (cue images of salads) and “Where I work” (snaps of offices). Result: less a “community” than the digital equivalent of shouting to be heard in a crowded bar.

There is a certain irony in the name of this wildly popular online destination. It is called Stumble Upon because it is about stumbling upon content-rich sites of specific interest, yet it can be accessed only through Internet Explorer or Firefox. Once you’ve downloaded a toolbar, there’s a great deal to commend in what is essentially a search engine, Jim, but not as we know it: this one is more interactive, quality-controlled and specific than Google or AltaVista. Select your favoured topic — cats, Iraq, horror movies — then press the Stumble button to view pages, often top-quality, recommended and reviewed by 250,000 idiosyncratic surfers. You, too, rate the pages, so Stumble gets to know its visitors and shows pages you ought to like, based on your interests and previous judgments. Best of all, you have a community of like-minded stumblers with whom you can make friends on the basis of their online tastes. Consider the possibilities.

An aptly named site that does tickle — not literally, but mentally. Tickle prides itself on providing “self-discovery” and matchmaking services to members all over the world. It’s Cosmo meets Oprah: sassy, with a smattering of psychobabble. Easy navigation invites you to explore yourself or find other people to explore. On the self- discovery front, the occasional visitor can take fascinating tests — “adapted to the British market linguistically and culturally by local psychologists” — from “Are you a menace on the roads?” to “Is it time to break up?” (though it takes nerve to base future happiness on 20 multiple-choice questions). On the matchmaking front, a psychometric test will match you with a like-minded other; last week there were “1,562,757 singles” waiting to be snapped up, many in the UK. Two-thirds of members are women, and Tickle is clearly aimed at the Bridget Jones generation. However, I remain sceptical about ever “finding yourself” on a website.

Brendan O’Neill is deputy editor of spiked (www.spiked-online.com)

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