10 Essential Websites

If MySpace is a PC, then Facebook is a Mac. The former may have more users, but the latter is classier and cleaner in design. Facebook also makes it super easy to find people you know, and it has won more fans among professionals and the thirtysomething crowd. The site has more than 30,000 add-on applications — among them, games, interactive maps and quizzes — to bling out your personal page (or spam your friends), and a redesign planned for later this year will restore the tidy Facebook look that the add-on apps have begun to clutter up. If you're on the hunt for new social networks to ply, check out upstarts Bebo and hi5.

—Anita Hamilton