There’s a lot to see on the internet, what with everyone sharing their personal demons and building bloggy soapboxes left and right. Despite this, we’re all guilty of just visiting the same few dozen sites over and over again, whilst ignoring the other 99.99999% of the net. ‘Course most of them deserve ignoring, but what’s surprising is how INCREDIBLY popular some sites you never heard of, are. Take these 8 sites – they probably won’t ring a bell and yet each one clocks in over 25 million unique visitors every month. To put that in perspective, that’s more than expedia.com, match.com, or vimeo.com manage. But what makes them so popular?

Alibaba.com
Linking you with cheap suppliers across most developing countries, alibaba is responsible for a sizeable portion of the tat clogging our nation’s high streets. It’s done a lot for developing businesses in the UK, opened up access to cheap manufacturing, and is the main reason every EU country is in hock to China.

Badoo.com
The perfect place to meet people! (not sex). You can chat, flirt, (not sex), socialize and have fun! (not sex). It’s a totally innocent and above board (sex?) and has nothing whatsoever to do with the Chlamydia outbreak currently sweeping Europe.

Scribd.com
The world’s largest social reading and publishing company, Scribd offers a brain-meltingly massive amount of content to read and discuss with like-minded Web 2.0 bookworms. You won’t find the latest Harry Potter adventure on here but you will find a trove of undiscovered personal passion projects.

Mediafire.com
You’ll have heard of and probably use dropbox, mediafire is a similar service with easy functionality for sharing. It’s worth checking out… unless you use dropbox in which case it’s pretty pointless.

Zedo.com
The most successful independent ad server in the US, Zedo builds software that allows publishers to manage ads on their pages. They also use HTTP cookies to track users’ browsing history which is why you get endless banner ads for paisley jumpsuits after searching for them on ASOS.

Miniclip.com
Your one-stop-shop for online games, fun games, puzzle games, action games, sports games, flash games, adventure games, multiplayer games and much much much more to help drown out the inevitable march towards death.

hi5.com
A very successful social network that has evolved into the leading social gaming network, hi5 was the third most popular challenger to facebook as recently as 3 years ago. Visitors can create their own avatar and interact with others playing over 200 games in a variety of genres.

Iminent.com
Two kids start a facebook page which fails to incite a riot and they get four years’ jail sentence, while the creators of this site walk freely. It’s an emoticon site! So you can download hilarious wacky emoticons to brighten up everyone’s day! Look, I’m mad me! Satan’s cartoon spawn.