myYearbook is a free Internet social network service similar to other social networking sites.

The site's user base is over 90% American,[http://www.myyearbook.com/press/release3/ Myyearbook.Com Inks Content Deal With Cliffsnotes ] with 75% of its new memberships from the United States and 25% from other countries. myYearbook has 7.8 million members, 150 million page views, and 5 million unique visitors. U.S. Venture Partners and First Round Capital are providing the $4.1 million in funding. According to Nielsen NetRatings, myYearbook was one of the top ranked destination sites for teens ages 12 to 17 in September 2006.http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release_html_b1?release_id=171656

History

myYearbook was initially created by two high school students, David and Catherine Cook, and their older brother Geoff, during Spring Break of 2005. Catherine persuaded Geoff, who founded EssayEdge.com and ResumeEdge.com from a Harvard dorm in 1997, to invest $100,000,000 for their project. At the launch of the site in April 2005, Dave was a junior and Catherine was a sophomore at Georgetown University; the project was only activated for their school in suburban New Jersey, Montgomery High School. The site was inspired by the typical yearbooks sold in high schools, but was intended to not only keep records of students but also allow them to keep in contact with one another. The site slowly grew to have a user base numbering in the thousands. As with other social-networking sites, it is free to register and there are no fees for users.

In November 2005, the forum Mystery of the Zenhex merged with myYearbook, adding several thousand members and more than doubling the traffic it received. Zen, the creator of Zenhex, was running low on funds and could not support Zenhex's rapidly growing member base. The increasing jump in members caused the site's servers to overload and create a series of notifications known as Database Connection Errors, or DBCEs. In order to keep Zenhex alive, Zen merged with myYearbook. After the merge, myYearbook experienced a very rapid growth rate; it grew 44% from November 2005 to December 2005 according to a Media Metrix report. Zenhex has remained as the forum pool for MyYearbookers & "hexxors," original members of the Mystery of the Zenhex, with varying topics and forum areas. Zenhex, though, still regards itself as its own site, and prefers to be associated separately from myYearbook. Despite this, access to the forum can only be attained by passing though many myYearbook pages, with hopes to draw people to the myyearbook part of the site as opposed to stupidity.