Each Alumni Sidekick site has a widening array of social networking tools. These include

• personal profile pages (compare to Facebook)
• updates (compare to Twitter)
• private messaging (double-blind, member-to-member with confidential notification)
• media links (upload directly or embed content — forthcoming — from Flickr, Picasa, YouTube or other media sites)
• groups (present organized special content; optional group forums)
• friends (create ad hoc groups of members)

Because they're in business primarily to own your mailing list and sell your data to advertisers. In contrast, Alumni Sidekick lets you define your site's purpose and appearance, refine it over time, and control the message you wish to send and the list(s) to which you want to send it.