General social networks or friends-based social networks are those that do not focus on a particular topic or niche, but rather put the emphasis on staying connected to your friends. The most popular of these are MySpace and Facebook, but there are a number of popular friends-based social networks, including international social networks.
Piczo
Aimed at teenagers, Piczo is an up-and-comer in the social networking ranks. Emphasizing the ability to customize profiles with interests and decorating them with glitter text without much technical skill required, Piczo is focused on showing your creativity.
Pownce
Pownce is an enhanced (albeit far less popular) form of Twitter. Like Twitter, it allows micro-blogging, but it allows longer messages, support for discussions, and embedded files and videos among other things.
Reunion
A social network with an emphasis on the past, Reunion is focused on helping you to find long-lost pals and old schoolmates. As such, it also takes distinctive aim at adult social networking users and features a reverse-search lookup to allow people to find out who is searching for them, though advanced features of the social network require a premium (i.e. fee-based) account. Reunion has also come under fire for some privacy concerns according to Wikipedia.
Tagged
Initially targeted at high school students to be high school's version of Facebook, Tagged has opened itself up to anyone. As such, it has been a fast-riser on the social networking charts the last few years. Tagged is quick to adopt new forms of media to decorate Tagged profiles and has partnerships with Slide, RockYou and PhotoBucket among others.
More of a micro-blogging service with social networking features, Twitter has become something of a cultural phenomenon in the past year. With the ability to receive Twitter status updates on your mobile, Twitter is able to keep people informed and was even used by Barack Obama to keep people informed during the 2008 election campaign.
Xanga
While many social networks allow you to host a blog, Xanga is more like a blog network with social networking features. In addition to a focus on customization, Xanga allows you to join blog rings, nudge fellow bloggers, and keep up with a mini-blog called a pulse.
