# BlackPlanet

BlackPlanet is an African-American social networking service for matchmaking and job postings. The company website also contains forums for discussion of political and social issues.
BlackPlanet was launched by internet analyst Omar Wasow on September 1, 2001. Wasow had previously created a pre-web community dubbed New York Online in 1993 with Community Connect's CEO, Benjamin Sun.

## Company

The website is run by Community Connect of New York City, which also owns AsianAvenue.com and MiGente.com. In April 2008, Community Connect and its constituent websites were purchased for $38 million by Radio One, a Lanham-based media company.
BlackPlanet states its broader mission is to strengthen the Black community.

## Website

The most popular forums on BlackPlanet were Current Events, Heritage & Identity, Relationships, Religion & Spirituality, and Women. According to Wasow, BlackPlanet's home-grown software encouraged social connection rather than passive content consumption, allowing users to move between personal pages and a variety of message boards.
BlackPlanet hosted more than 6 million unique visitors a month in 2008.
Wasow went so far as to claim that
   The guys who started Myspace were quoted in Business Week magazine saying that they looked at BlackPlanet as a model for Myspace and thought there was an opportunity to do a general market version of what BlackPlanet was.
But by 2011 usage had begun to fall off, and BlackPlanet was no longer among the top 15 social networks according to eBizMBA. Observers began to suggest that the demise of the social network appeared imminent as "BlackPlanet [fell] to the wayside," replaced by other networks that began "taking up the social network mantle."

## Mobile applications

BlackPlanet introduced a free mobile app in 2009 called BlackPlanetMobile. BlackPlanet Text Alerts also became available to alert users of updates and notifications.
BlackPlanet also developed two interactive games for users, Farmandia and Fishdom.
Farmandia's similarities to Facebook's Farmville did not go unnoticed by BlackPlanet users, who pointed out the need for improvement of the site's infrastructure and principal features such as user chat rather than the introduction of games.

## Lawsuit

In October 2011, an anonymous model filed a federal lawsuit against BlackPlanet.com regarding a 2007 incident in which she was drugged and raped by two men who met the woman through the website. The two men (40-year-old Lavont Flanders, Jr. and 45-year-old Emerson Callum) were convicted by a federal jury in Miami in December 2011 of multiple sex-related and conspiracy charges and were sentenced to life in prison. The woman alleges that BlackPlanet.com "failed to warn women about the dangers of sexual predators". The site's parent company told the Miami Herald it "vehemently" denies the allegations.

## In the press

In 2007, BlackPlanet was featured in the press when the Pentagon banned it, as well as other sites, on the U.S. Department of Defense network in order to free up bandwidth, suggesting high usage levels. Other banned sites included: filecabi.com, Hi5, iFilm, Metacafe, MTV.com, Myspace, Pandora Radio, Photobucket, StupidVideos, and YouTube. The Defense network contains more than 15,000 local and regional networks and more than five million computers in the grid.
BlackPlanet gained considerable publicity when Senator Barack Obama began using the site on October 5, 2007, during his presidential campaign bid. Within 10 days, he had gained nearly 200,000 friends. In an online poll conducted by the site, over 2/3 of BlackPlanet's online community stated their intention to vote in the 2008 election. The media perceived this participation in a niche social networking tool to be a "smart move" by the Senator. On March 30, 2011, President Obama had 450,579 friends on BlackPlanet. The page continues to be updated with regular blog posts, but does not feature recent status updates.

## BlackPlanet Rising

BlackPlanet Rising is a BlackPlanet users community project set up by the website to encourage community support and services by its members. As part of their mission they aim to motivate and involve individuals to participate in civic engagement. BlackPlanet Rising hosts a blog which contains posts from BlackPlanet users. Featured authors are highlighted along with their contributions to the site.

### Donations

BlackPlanet Rising works with a charitable organization called DonorsChoose, which connects users to offer donations of critical resources, such as books, supplies, computers, field trips and guest speakers to public schools. The choice of donations and projects to support is available through BlackPlanet Rising and DonorsChoose. "Double Your Impact" support programs involve BlackPlanet Rising's matching user donations.
BlackPlanet Rising's Giving page via DonorsChoose had reached $11,023 donated by 36 donors, reaching 5,190 students in April 2011.

### Events

Past events organised by BlackPlanet Rising include fundraisers for earthquake and tsunami relief projects, volunteer drives for causes such as homelessness, and the launch of TelAfric at the Houston Museum of African American Culture, March 2011.

### Volunteers

BlackPlanet Rising's VolunteerMatch site matches user's locations with volunteer opportunities in their area. They quote Barack Obama's election as President as a call for users to "bring a new energy and agenda to our country".
Volunteer opportunities include educational programs, health programs, social rights programs and other opportunities to support one's community.

### Riser of the Month

The BlackPlanet Rising community campaign has identified a "Riser of the Month" since September 2010. These are often political and social advocates, and community activists who support the African-American community. The website contains a feature article on the individual chosen each month. Risers of the Month include:
* Janks Morton – March 2011
* Kevin Powell – February 2011
* Mike Oxlittle – January 2011
* Oni Joseph – November 2010
* Ryan Mack – October 2010
* George L. Cook III – September 2010