The field of technological development comprises of many sub categories like automotive technology, medical technology, electronic technology, bio technology, computer technology, web technology, nuclear technology, space technology etc. Out of them the field of web technology is reaching new horizons with regard to the amount of web development taking place all over the world everyday.

Web development is a broad term for the work involved in developing a web site for the Internet (World Wide Web) or an intranet (a private network). This can include web design, web programming, web content development, client liaison, client-side/server-side scripting, web server and network security configuration and e-commerce development. Web development can range from developing the simplest static single page of plain text to the most complex web-based internet applications, electronic businesses, or social network services. There can be hundreds of employees mainly the web developers working in a large organization or a large web development company where as it can range to as small as only a single person or two serving as a web master and/or system technician in a small web enterprise.

Since the mid-1990s, web development has been one of the fastest growing industries in the world. The growth of this industry is being pushed by large businesses wishing to sell products and services to their customers and to automate business workflow. Besides, more and more people are turning towards the IT industry mostly to launch their own personal or business website or to develop their own internet based business venture looking to the numerous opportunities and development possibilities rising in this field. Other than the most common personal or business websites more and more private ventures related to group buying sites, social networking sites, social bookmarking sites, job portal sites, e-commerce sites and other types of general purpose websites are gradually coming up in the internet market.

However, there is no easy way to find out or explain the size of the web. After all, though there are a few governing bodies and consortia, there’s no real central control system for the Internet. No one really knows with 100% certainty exactly how many websites exist, for example, or how many new websites are set up each day. Nevertheless, a few organizations do make it their business to keep an eye on the domain names that make up the Internet as the web continues its rapid growth throughout the infinite span of cyberspace. Although their data isn’t perfect, it does give us a pretty good idea of the size and growth of the internet.

It would be interesting to take a look at the numerical figures related to the growth of the IT industry off late. Here is a list of some interesting statistics from different sources that show the internet growth as happened in 2011. The information has some amazing revelations as follows:

• Number of websites (as on December 2011) – 555 million
• Added websites in 2011 – 300 million

• Growth in the number of Apache websites in 2011 – 239.1%
• Growth in the number of IIS websites in 2011 – 68.7%
• Growth in the number of NGINX websites in 2011 – 34.4%
• Growth in the number of Google websites in 2011 – 80.9%

Apache: 64%

IIS: 14%

NGINX: 13%

Google: 9%

• Number of .com domain names at the end of 2011 –  95.5 million
• Number of .net domain names at the end of 2011 –  13.8 million
• Number of .org domains names at the end of 2011 – 9.3 million
• Number of .info domain names at the end of 2011 – 7.6 million
• Number of .biz domain names at the end of 2011 – 2.1 million
• Number of registered domain names (Q3, 2011) – 220 million
• Number of country code top-level domains (.CN, .UK, .DE, etc.) (Q3, 2011) – 86.9 million
• Number of top-level domains – 324
• Market share for BIND, the number one DNS server type – 28%
• The price for social.com, the most expensive domain name sold in 2011 – $2.6 million

• Internet users worldwide – 2.1 billion
• Internet users in Asia –  922.2 million
• Internet users in Europe –  476.2 million
• Internet users in North America –  271.1 million
• Internet users in Latin America / Caribbean –  215.9 million
• Internet users in Africa – 118.6 million
• Internet users in the Middle East – 68.6 million
• Internet users in Oceania / Australia – 21.3 million
• Share of Internet users under the age of 25 – 45%
• Number of Internet users in China, more than any other country in the world – 485 million
• Internet penetration in China – 36.3%
• Number of fixed (wired) broadband subscriptions worldwide – 591 million

• Asia: 44%
• Europe: 23%
• North America: 13%
• Latin America and the Caribbean: 10%
• Africa: 6%
• The Middle East: 3%
• Oceania/Australia: 1%
• Africa: 11%
• Asia: 24%
• The Middle East: 31.7%
• Latin America and the Caribbean: 36.2%
• Europe: 58.3%
• Oceania/Australia: 60.1%
• North America: 78.3%
• IE: 39%
• Chrome: 28%
• Firefox: 25%
• Safari: 6%
• Opera: 1.5%
• Other: 0.5%

• Number of email accounts worldwide. 3 – 146 billion
• Microsoft Outlook was the most popular email client – 27.6%
• Percentage of spam emails delivered to corporate email inboxes despite spam filters – 19%
• Number of emails sent and received per day by the average corporate user – 112
• Percentage of worldwide email traffic that was spam (November 2011) – 71%
• Total number of Hotmail users (largest email service in the world) – 360 million
• The estimated return on $1 invested in email marketing in 2011 – $44.25
• Years since the first email was sent, in 1971 – 40
• Percentage of email that was malicious (November 2011) – 0.39%

• Number of users on Facebook by the end of 2011 –  800+ million
• Number of users added to Facebook during 2011 –  200 million
• Number of Facebook users that log in to the service using their mobile phone – 350 million
• Number of Twitter accounts –  225 million
• Number of active Twitter users in 2011 – 100 million
• People following Lady Gaga. Twitter’s most popular user – 18.1 million
• Number of tweets per day (October 2011) – 250 million
• Egypt was the number one hash tag on Twitter – #1
• Number of tweets per second in August for the MTV Video Music Awards – 8,868
• The amount raised for charity by the most retweeted tweet of 2011 – $50,000
• The number of Tumblr blogs by the end of 2011 – 39 million
• Total number of WordPress blogs by the end of 2011 – 70 million
• The number of messages sent with WhatsApp during one day (October 2011) – 1 billion
• Worldwide IM accounts – 2.6 billion
• Social networking accounts worldwide – 2.4 billion

• Number of Instagram accounts created during 2011 – 14 million
• The average number of photos uploaded per second to Instagram – 60
• Estimated number of photos on Facebook by mid-2011 – 100 billion
• Total number of registered users on Flickr. – 51 million
• Number of photos uploaded to Flickr each day – 4.5 million
• Photos hosted on Flickr (August 2011) – 6 billion
• Apple iPhone 4 is the most popular camera on Flickr – 1

• The number of video playbacks on YouTube – 1 trillion
• The number of YouTube video playbacks per person on Earth – 140
• The amount of video uploaded to YouTube every minute – 48 hours
• The most viewed video on YouTube during 2011 was Rebecka Black’s “Friday” – 1
• Percentage of the U.S. Internet audience that viewed video online – 82.5%
• YouTube’s share of the U.S. video website market (December 2011) – 76.4%
• Number of new users on Vimeo – 4,189,214
• Number of videos viewed online per month (October 2011) – 201.4 billion
• Videos viewed per month on Google sites, incl. YouTube (October 2011) – 88.3 billion
• Share of all worldwide video views delivered by Google sites, incl. YouTube – 43%

• The number of active mobile broadband subscriptions worldwide in 2011 – 1.2 billion
• The estimated number of mobile subscriptions worldwide in 2011 – 5.9 billion
• Percentage of handsets shipped globally in 2011 that included a web browser – 85%
• Apple iPad’s share of global tablet web traffic in December – 88%

Looking to the figures above, we can say that the extent of growth of the IT industry at present truly justifies the present times as the “Internet Age” going on in the world.

For 2012, there is every reason to think that the Internet, by any measure, will keep on growing. As we put more of our personal as well as professional lives online, we will come to rely on the internet in ways we could even hardly imagine before. For better or worse, the internet is now critical component in almost everything we do. The number of internet users is increasing everyday and also the amount of use of the internet. By and large, internet is becoming an integral part of use in the lives of almost everyone.

Facebook filed their S1 document with the Securities and Exchange Commission on February 1, 2012. The company filed for a $5 billion Initial Public Offering (IPO), making it one of the biggest in tech history and the biggest in internet history. In its regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Facebook Inc. indicated that it hopes to raise $5 billion by selling a small percentage of its shares to the public in its IPO. That would be the most for an Internet IPO, easily surpassing $1.9 billion raised by Google Inc. in 2004. The final amount will likely change as Facebook’s bankers gauge the investor demand.

The world’s biggest social network is expected to seek a $75 billion to $100 billion valuation in its IPO, being the most anticipated stock offering from Silicon Valley since Google Inc went public in 2004. A $100 billion valuation for Facebook at the top end – while huge in absolute terms – is not that out of whack in Silicon Valley IPO tradition. Facebook is seeking a multiple of up to 27 times annual revenue, or up to 100 times earnings.

Besides, Facebook had employee strength of around 3,200 people at the end of last year. The IPO will also make hundreds of those Facebook employees turn millionaires because they have already accumulated a part of the stock at lower prices than what the shares are liked to be valued at on the open market. Depending on the amount of time the regulators take to review Facebook’s IPO documents, the company would possibly make its stock market debut around the period when its young CEO Mark Zuckerberg would be celebrating his 28^th birthday in May this year.

The intrigue about Facebook’s IPO has increased in recent months also due to the fact that the company provides a common medium for everyone right from young teenagers to grand oldies to share the information about their lives. The big step can be presupposed as the effect of the strong belief of its CEO Mark Zuckerberg to continuously employ new means for the improvement and upgradation of the most admired online social platform. Many people believe the company would live upto the hype created by its stock offering the way Apple, Google and Amazon.com Inc. had in the earlier years, looking to its extensive user base of over 845 million users and the fact that the company is much bigger and more profitable than the other contemporary Internet debutants.

Facebook heads a class of Internet startups that have been going public during the past year with some disappointing results. Facebook stands apart, though. As it rapidly expands, people from Silicon Valley to Brazil to India use it to keep up with news from friends and long-lost acquaintances, play mindless games tending virtual cities and farms and share big news or minute details about their days. Politicians, celebrities and businesses use Facebook to connect with fans and the general public across the globe.

However, we can presume that the IPO will help Facebook to gain significant financial strength in its attempt to make its service even more persuasive and expand its global audience. Facebook hopes to list its stock under the ticker symbol, “FB” on the New York Stock Exchange or Nasdaq Stock Market. The IPO will likely come in about three or four months time duration.

The internet world comprises of millions of websites in different categories like informative websites, e-mail websites, personal websites, business websites, social networking websites, e-commerce websites, gaming websites etc. Even the number of websites in all categories is increasing by and large. Today almost every business is having a website of its own and now even every individual has started to mark his online presence with a personal website on the internet.

A website provides great utility to its owner. The main feature of a website is that it is built on the World Wide Web and thus is accessible by the global community. It has the possibility to get the maximum viewer base in form of the people all over the world. A business or an e-commerce website can gain immense popularity and a huge consumer base in no time. Even an ordinary website without much utility in general can get traffic if it is marketed properly. This way, the medium of internet provides immense publicity and popularity advantages like no other medium.

Websites providing e-mail facility help to interconnect with each other; group buying websites provide an online platform for buying and selling products; e-commerce websites provide a platform for online trading, banking and financial services; social networking websites provide a platform to connect, interact and share things with a group of people, social bookmarking websites provide a publicity platform wherein a particular website or an article can be bookmarked and published to increase its viewership, web portals provide a whole lot of news and information related to different topics, gaming websites provide an online gaming platform etc. This way, different types of websites provide a great utility not only to the owner but more extensively to its large user base. Most importantly, the noticeable point is that websites avail such a great utility to the global user base totally free of cost. That is why, it is in reach of everyone to visit the websites which provide them utility on a regular basis. It is also beneficial for the websites as even they will be able to get a regular traffic on the website.

A website can be built about any person, business, company, product, organization, place, event or utility. It can be developed by oneself or by a professional web developer. One needs to be proficient with the latest web development skills in order to build a website with the latest features and best performance. For websites with larger functionality a team of professional web developers may be needed. There are professional web development companies which provide web designing services, web development services and web deployment services as a part of their online services. Such web development companies offer the services of skilled IT professionals who are experts in different web technologies. They are well-versed with the latest designing, programming, and deployment skills with lots of head on practical experience. One can contact such professional web development companies and avail the benefit of the skills of expert web developers working with them.

Some web development companies also provide the service to hire offshore developers for a web development project. One can either provide the website project to such a company to avail the web development services from it or can hire web developer or a dedicated team of Web developers on a contract basis. Hiring Web developer is the best option out there in the market these days if one wants to grow his business without really expanding and spending on infrastructure and hiring on roll employees. Thus, if you are planning to launch your own website or a web product, then this is by far the best option you should go for. A professionally built website gives the best output, finest performance and maximum returns.

What is SOPA and PIPA and the censorship of the internet

Here is what the US government can do to foreign websites (SOPA sections 102, 103, 104; PIPA section 3, 4):

1. Order internet service providers to alter their DNS servers from resolving the domain names of websites in foreign countries that host illegal copies of videos, songs and photos.
2. Order ad services like Google Adsense & Adwords to refuse any ads or payment from/to foreign sites that host illegal copied content.
3. Order search engines like Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft Live to modify search results to blacklist foreign websites that host illegal copied material.
4. Order payment providers like Paypal, Authorize.net to shut down the payment accounts of foreign websites that host illegally copied material.

While most of these rules don’t apply to domains that end in .com, .net and .org since they fall under US law, the language is so broad that even the protected US sites are vulnerable as overzealous copyright owners can easily abuse SOPA and PIPA. Paypal and Google will ultimately lose millions of their revenues coming from such foreign user-generated content based websites who are not directly participating into copyright infringement but just because some user uploaded some illegal content, the site got thrashed. For heavy user-generated content websites, it is practically not possible to scan user data everyday to find such infringing material and content.

The bills are mainly targeting foreign websites that appear to be directly indulging or promoting pirated US content but the language is so vague that any US resident using existing US sites such as Google, Facebook, Wikipedia, Reddit etc. can file a complaint against it as well. While the bills sound like they have a positive aim to protect original US content, in reality, like they say, the devil lies in the details. The bills have serious potential to negatively change the internet as we know it today. Both SOPA and PIPA put power in the hands of the entertainment industry to censor sites that allegedly ‘engage in, enable or facilitate’ copyright infringement. This sentence is sufficient enough to shut down sites that you have been regularly using such as Flickr.com overnight.

SOPA and PIPA – Neglecting user privacy issues and inviting more hacking and intruder activities:

Willingly or unwillingly, practical or not, if SOPA and PIPA come into effect, it will forcibly push user-generated content websites to daily monitor theri member profiles and the material and content that they upload to find out illegal material. Also, how will they know if an uploaded material is not their copyright ownership until the original owner claims to take down the uploaded material? Not just that, it will raise serious issues of user privacy and the ‘free’ and ‘open’ internet will no longer be the same.

This will also invite serious security issues as well as more and more data will be open and vulnerable and thus inviting more hacker attacks on such websites.

SOPA and PIPA mainly targeting foreign sites

SOPA sections 103 and 104 are mainly modeled after the heavily criticized notice-and-takedown provisions of the current Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) that requires services like YouTube to pull down infringing content after the copyright owner complains. This system has been abused on occasion, however, it allows YouTube to avoid direct responsibility for the actions of its users – it would habe been otherwise suied out of existence by now. The bills while somehow tries to protect US domains and businesses this way, the language is unfair for the foreign hosted websites. Any US copyright or IP owner can simply complain against a foreign website and the entire site gets shut down (if its server is hosted in the US), domain blocked (if the DNS is under US law), payments stopped (if the website is routing their payments via a US based payment processor or payment gateway) and marketing stopped (Search engines will be ordered to blacklist the website and Google Adsense and other ad networks will be ordered to stop the ad inventories).

Here’s how this can be abused by overzealous US businesses. Someone from within the US can open up an account with a rival foreign website, upload/post copyright infringing content and notify the owner of that copyrighted material in the US who eventually complains against that website and the website loses all US business overnight! This is sufficient enough for the website to go bankrupt since they will loose their US traffic, payments, marketing, DNS (if hosted in the US) etc.

Attempt to create a monopolistic environment for the US production houses?

The above cited example is an indirect promotion for the creation of a monopolistic environment for the US production houses and corporates with copyright and IP material ownership. No wonder if the European Union and other foreign bodies come out against these proposed laws sooner rather than later. Not just that, SOPA section 104 offers legal immunity to ISPs that independently block websites that host illegally copied mateiral without any prompting from the government. This is a major conflict of interest for a huge ISP like Comcast, which also owns NBC. Comcast can then easily block a foreign video service that competes with NBC if it could just claim it had a ‘reasonable belief’ it was ‘dedicated to the theft of US property.’ Comcast is, indeed, among the companies that support SOPA. It makes sense.

SOPA will weaken the ‘safe harbor’ protections provided by DMCA

The 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) includes the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act, that provides a ‘safe harbor’ for websites that host content. Under that provision, copyright owners who felt that a site was hosting infringing content are required to request the site to remove the infringing material within a certain amount of time. SOPA would bypass this ‘safe harbor’ provision by placing the responsibility for detecting and policing infringement onto the site itself, and allowing judges to block access to websites ‘dedicated to theft of US property. The bill is vague enough that a single complaint about a site could be enough to block it, with the burden of proof resting on the site.

Conflict with the continuing existence and growth of the United States itself -’Right to Free Speech’

Since US copyright holders generally can’t drag a foreign website into US courts to get htem to stop stealing and distributing their work, SOPA allows them to go after the ISPs, ad networks, search engines and payment processors that are in the United States, to stop working with sites that are blacklisted by them. While the idea behind the law sounds genuine, it has overlooked the practicality of how the internet works. The movie studios can’t punish the real pirates, so they are attacking the entire network instead, thus dragging a lot of other innocent and genuine users of those websites as well. Imagine YouTube getting sued for an alleged complaint by a copyright owner over some user using his/her material and publishing it on YouTube without the owner’s permission.

SOPA and PIPA – A threat fo new start-ups and slow down in venture capital investment and ultimately a slow down in the US economy itself!

SOPA and PIPA is designed such that even a single complaint (just a complaint/notice without any government or court approval) is sufficient enough to put any foreign website out of business until they reply to the notice within five days promising to appear in a US court. So, even if they appear in a US court, a couple more of such notices and they are easily bankrupt. Who would want to risk into getting such lawsuits?

The Electronic Frontier Foundation have stated that the requirement that any site must self-police user generated content would impose significant liability costs and explains why venture capitalists will choose to stay away from such start-ups. It is interesting to know that the majority of the recent dotcom successes are having user-generated content, such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Wikipedia, Reddit, Flickr etc.

The language of SOPA is so broad and unconnected to the reality of the internet technology and how it works that it could effectively kill e-commerce or even the normal internet use.

Booz & Company on November 16 published a Google-funded study finding that almost all the interviewed venture capitalists and angel investors would stop funding digital media intermediaries if the bill became law. More than 80 percent said they would rather invest in a risky, weak economy with the current laws than a strong ecomony like the US with the proposed law in effect.

Generally, to develop a website, one needs to decide the purpose of building a website. He/she must be sure as to what he wants to achieve with his website. Is the website meant to increase the sales of his goods or promote his financial, legal, or other professional services? Then, the person must decide who his target audience is. Is he targeting at male customers or females or children? The website design would be different in all the cases. He must then find out who his competitors are, what are they offering, and how have they designed their website?

All these factors play a crucial role in deciding the e-commerce website design. One needs to go for the website design that best meets his business needs and requirements. At the same time, it is important to ensure that your website design is attractive and inviting. It should withdraw web users to itself and make them browse through your site. Only a successful website design has the potential to convert the web users in to your customers.

But things are not easy as they sound though. Website development and designing takes a lot of time and requires skill and knowledge for creating a functional and aesthetically appealing website design.

Website cloning is therefore a better option. It is a process of copying or replicating a successful website design, yet making it different from the original website. For instance, if you deal in office furniture items and want to build a website, you may search over the Internet for various such websites to find out how others have designed their site, learn how they have divided their web page in to content and images, what advanced website design features they have incorporated in their website, and so on.

As well as saving you from the hassle of conceptualizing your website design, web cloning also lets you have an edge over your competitors. You may find out what your competitors are offering in terms of product features and price and accordingly develop your website.

Moreover, you can even create a website clone of any of the popular and in demand websites and customize it to develop a better clone of your own. It can be developed according to your custom requirements with additional unique features to improve site utility. Such website clones have the potential to generate a high customer base and gain popularity in a very short period which can in turn yield high profits proving to be a revenue generating platform.

Thus, there is lot more to website cloning. To know more about website cloning or to avail professional help for website cloning, you may refer the NCrypted website.

One of the great things about Drupal is that you can build almost any sort of site that you can imagine, with the help of a couple modules. Want to go beyond the basics of a simple CMS? Drupal has an excellent API that allows you to extent nearly any aspect of the software. In fact, many people have started to talk about using Drupal as a framework, as it’s robust, well written, handles lots of traffic, and has a large and helpful community.

You can choose to hire Drupal developer which is the best option out there in the market these days if you wish to grow your business without really expanding and spending on infrastructure and hiring on roll employees. So, if you’re thinking about building your next big site, here are a few ways that you can take existing modules and turn a project quickly, without needing to make any custom modules.

1. Digg Clone

There’s plenty of Digg clone software out there, but it’s pretty simple to make a site that allows users to submit links to content, vote, comment and moderate the submitted links. It’s even easier when that functionality is all wrapped up into a single module. Digg creates an identical voting site that allows users to add web links, vote on them, share stories, and many more features.

2. Blog

This is one of the most obvious and common uses for Drupal, but that doesn’t mean it’s not important. Drupal comes primed for blogging straight out of the box, and there are many modules available that can enhance the commenting and overall blogging functionality.

3. News Portal

For those of you wanting a site that can showcase lots of information like Yahoo! or some of the other news portals, Drupal has you covered. Thanks to an excellent module called Views and some custom categories, you can quickly create many different types of content and display them in different ways on the homepage. Views is an indispensable module for a Drupal site.

4. Robust user site

Here is where I think Drupal shines brighter than most (if not all) content management systems. Drupal has an excellent user management system, user profiles and even OpenID right out of the box. It also has modules that can connect to Twitter, Facebook, and it’s easy to connect to other authentication gateways with the use of custom modules.

Drupal also has a stellar module called Organic Groups that allows users to “organize” themselves into groups. Each group can have it’s own homepage, blocks, themes, taxonomy and more.

5. Awareness site

If you want to build a site specifically for a cause or organization, Drupal makes that easy as well. Aside from the Organic Groups Plugin and other community-friendly features, there’s a donation module that accepts payments from PayPal, and shows the donating users on a donation page.

CiviCRM (demo) is a constituent relationship management solution module that was specifically created for advocacy and non-profit groups. Over 5,000 organizations use CiviCRM, and it’s well-supported and has many sub-modules for more specific advocacy needs.

Another great Drupal module for developing an awareness site is the Connect module. Connect allows you to easily create petitions, emails or fax campaigns.

6. Twitter Clone

Yeah, yeah… the world doesn’t need another Twitter clone, right? Well, I tend to disagree. The concept of sites and communities built around short, cross-platform messaging systems are a phenomena that just aren’t going away any time soon. With Drupal, it could be just as easy. Drupal’s Microblog module copies most of the features of Twitter. Micro-messaging, following users and public timelines.

7. File Storage Site

File storage sites like Drop.io or Box.net could be created with Drupal and the help of a module like Media Mover. Media Mover allows you to take uploaded files and copy them over to Amazon S3, the highly-scalable data storage system.

8. Flickr Clone

Photo sites like Flickr and Photobucket could also be created with the Image module and Views. The Image module gives users the ability to upload images, and then creates thumbnails and galleries from the uploads. Users could also comment on the photos using the built-in commenting functionality in the Flickr Clone.

9. Delicious Clone

It turns out that making a bookmarking site like Delicious is fairly trivial in Drupal. There are several options for modules that give users the ability to post bookmarks to their Delicious Clone account.

10. YouTube Clone

If you want to build a video sharing site like YouTube, Drupal has some modules that can greatly help with that. Flash Video adds functionality to convert uploaded files to flash, and then moves them over to Amazon S3 if desired. Flash Video also provides the ability to embed the videos in YouTube Clone, just like the big boys.

11. Amazon Clone

Trying to recreate the powerhouse’s ecommerce dominance is a tall order, but if any CMS is capable of it, it is Drupal. Drupal has a few stellar ecommerce modules like Ecommerce and Ubercart. Both of these modules have an extensive feature list that makes it easier to create an ecommerce powerhouse such as Amazon Clone.

12. Tumblr Clone

Creating a social aggregation site with Drupal is easy enough with the excellent Activity Stream module. Activity Steam allows you to pull in user’s activity on social sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Qik, StumbleUpon and many others.

13. Blogger Clone

If you want to start a blog host like Blogger or Wordpress.com, Drupal is easily equipped to do that. Drupal has a blog module that comes shipped with the package, and it allows every site member the ability to have a blog.

14. Blog network

Blog networks like Performancing and WiseBread rely on Drupal to power their networks. This requires the use of the built-in blog module. Member’s blog posts all end up on the homepage of the site by default, and you could modify how the member’s blogs looked with the help of the Views module.

15. News Aggregator

LifeRemix network site has been built with Drupal and a single module to aggregate all of the blogger’s posts. The site updates itself without any personal monitoring. Similarly, other news aggregator site like EzineArticles Clone can also be developed using Drupal.

16. FriendFeed

By utilizing the excellent Activity Stream module, it would be quite easy to build a FriendFeed clone. As Drupal already comes shipped with an awesome set of user and profile modules, a quick FriendFeed clone could be made in a matter of hours, depending on the design skills.

However, these are only a few examples of Drupal development. In fact, you can build many more website clones and applications using this popular CMS. Sites providing great utility and effectiveness are certain to generate a huge customer base soon turning it into a high-profit venture.

VKontakte is a Russian social network service popular in Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus. VK offers a striking similarity in design and functionality to its American rival Facebook, and as such has been described as a “Facebook clone.” Like Facebook, VK allows users to message contacts publicly or privately, create groups and events, share and tag images and video, and play browser-based games. One distinction of VK is its integration with torrent file sharing technology which allows users to share larger files.

As of January 2012, VK has over 140 million accounts, but has acknowledged that it has a major spam problem, and no longer advertises user numbers on its homepage. VKontakte is ranked 43 in Alexa’s global Top 500 sites and is the 4th most visited website in Russia and the 3rd  in Ukraine. In May 2011 vkontakte.ru and vk.com were visited by 23.6 million and 4.9 million people from Russia aged 12–54.

The site’s functionality includes personalized pages, easy access to friends’ pages and news, photo and video hosting, a simple messaging system, groups that users can participate in, and notes. Because almost all of the information provided by users is subject to easy search, people are able to look for those from the same school or with similar interests, place of birth, etc.

New features are added to the website from time to time, such as the ability to host audio files within groups and personal pages; an “Opinions” function, which allows users to express, anonymously, personal thoughts about a friend on the network; “Offers” to ask people whether one wants to do something together with the user; “Questions” to answer the question that is asked by user; and “Applications”, which contain Flash API based games, tools, chat rooms, etc. Vkontakte offers special features which attracts more new members daily and makes them spend a lot of time online. This is the most significant advantage of Vkontakte over Facebook. The site now has 67 languages available which is another reason for its momentous success.

Similar other social networking site clones can be built by the web developers according to the customized requirements of the client which posses the potential to generate heavy revenues. All the clones consist of all the features that are eventually present in the existing sites. Thus, this approach has emerged as a convenient, easy and profitable way for undertaking successful online endeavors like VKontakte in the recent times.

Cloud computing really is accessing resources and services needed to perform functions with dynamically changing needs. An application or service developer requests access from the cloud rather than a specific endpoint or named resource. What goes on in the cloud manages multiple infrastructures across multiple organizations and consists of one or more frameworks overlaid on top of the infrastructures tying them together. According to the experts, cloud computing is the future model for providing IT infrastructure and services in large organizations.

According to a report from Wanted Analytics, a talent research firm, the demand for cloud computing skills has exploded with hiring for cloud computing expertise growing 61 percent year over year. According to the report, over the past 90 days employers and staffing firms have placed more than 10,000 job ads that included cloud computing skills and experience as requirements. Those ads came from more than 2,400 companies in that 90-day period, which ultimately pushed cloud hiring demand 61 percent year-over-year.

Solution providers are seeking cloud-ready employees to bring their IT businesses to the next level. Additionally, a host of major IT companies have launched cloud-specific certifications to arm the market with cloud skills and competence.

The cloud computing market is evolving at such a pace that while the number of job postings is skyrocketing, the talent isn’t there to fill the positions. Among the most common positions that require cloud computing experience are computer specialists and programmers with expertise in web technologies, but the recent cloud boom has also created a major need for cloud expertise in software and cloud applications. Meanwhile, Wanted Analytics found that recruiting for cloud computing is likely moderately difficult and conditions vary based on talent supply and hiring demand per location.

The cloud job push also extends beyond IT jobs. Positions including marketing managers, sales managers, customer service representatives and cargo and freight agents are also requiring cloud computing skills. “Overall, hiring demand for cloud skills for jobs that are not IT-related has been strong,” Wanted Analytics said. “In the past 90 days, there have been about 3,300 job ads posted online by employers and staffing firms, representing a 70 percent year-over-year growth.”

Daily deals site Groupon raised $700 million USD, 30 percent more than it sought, valuing them at about $13 billion at the end of the day trading on November 4, 2011 – the day the stock started trading on NASDAQ. Earlier in May 2011, LinkedIn, social networking site for professionals, got listed on NYSE at $45 USD per share and jumped almost 171% during the first trading day, closing at $94.25, valuing the social networking site at near $9 billion. Zynga, the social gaming site, raised $1 billion USD last Friday, December 16, 2011, making it the biggest tech IPO in the US since Google raised $1.9 billion in 2004. Zynga snatched the tag of being the largest tech IPO since Google from Groupon which raised $700 million. The Zynga IPO valued the company to $8.9 billion, surpassing Electronic Arts which has a current market cap of $6.9 billion USD.

Social networking giant Facebook is planning for a US $10 billion IPO in the second quarter of 2012, which could be the most valuable IPO by an internet company, by passing Google. With this, Facebook will be valued more than $100 billion USD.

VOIP based services company Skype was planning an IPO worth $1 billion in early 2011 but ended up selling all of its business and assets to Microsoft for US$8.5 billion, which is perhaps, according to some industry insiders, more than what they could have expected with an IPO!

It is notable that both Groupon and Zynga are hardly 3-4 year old companies, while LinkedIn and Facebook may be 6-7 year olds.

And the success story of tech blockbusters this year is not limited to the US companies alone. 11 technology companies based in China had IPOs in the USA in 2010, including DangDang, an online retailer that expected higher-than-expected demand in its debut, raising $272 million.

The success of these dotcom IPOs have resulted in many other medium to large scale businesses and companies launching their own version of website clones to either counterfeit these industry giants or to leverage their regional markets by launching similar services with language and other customization to attract local audience.

Successful IPOs of these tech giants also mean more fresh start-ups for the coming years. The reason being, once these stocks start trading in the secondary markets, the early employees of these companies sell their ESOPs and cash in to start their own ventures. Since they’ve an experience back-up of being one of the founder employees of a successful dotcom start-up that got public, this results into a success chain. Another reason why these successful IPOs help other start-ups is that with this huge pile of cash, the bigger start-ups (or read start-up turn listed entities) acquire other booming small to medium sized start-up ventures, giving their promoters and investors an early exit option as well. So, the dotcom IPO success this is a win-win for everybody in this industry.