I'll try to keep it short...

I'm probably going to regret saying that, so I'll get on with it. Here are my thoughts on the three websites I mentioned previously.
I'll start with Gaia Online because maybe it will be the least known to a casual surfer. I could be wrong of course. Afterall I knew about Gaia before the other two I mentioned. That being said, I could probably tell you more about it. So here goes...

Gaia Online started life as an online forum in around 2003. It used to be only forums (or so I've been told), but over the years it has evolved into a huge online community with lots of things for people to do. As far as I know there's always been avatars which you can dress up in a variety of ways, and you can either earn Gaia gold by playing games, posting in forums, surfing the site and many other things, such as competitions, or you can purchase Gaia cash (I prefer the afformentioned method. Although I am guilty of purchasing some Gaia cash once), and with your gold or cash you can purchase clothing, household products, aquatic life for your aquarium (A newish feature), and a variety of other things (Important note: I'm talking about pixels - Not real stuff). Gaia can be fun, but it's such a huge community that, as with everything there are a few people who just want to spoil it for others. Some people have the attitude of "It's the internet, I can do or say what I like." I've seen this kind of attitude in the forums mostly. Especially the General Discussion Forum. Some of the things I've seen and read in there would burn your eyes out. Maybe I should go into more detail, but just use your imagination. I will say that if I had kids I wouldn't let them anywhere near that site. It's a PG13 site by the way. I forgot to mention that earlier. There's no upper age limit. Which is a good thing sometimes, like when you want to read a sensible post that isn't filled with sexual deviancy. <.< ...On a lighter note; Last year you could have signed up if you were over one hundred (The birth year on the application form went all the way down to 1900). I'm being silly, there are other resources which can be used in conjuntion with Gaia such as the two I'll talk about in a minute and there's also tektek.org which you can use to design a dream avatar, get profile themes, autoformat posts using the Gaia Toolbar add-on for Firefox and more. I think that's Gaia in a nutshell (Admittedly a rather large nutshell). So onto the next one.

There's a lot less to say about Photobucket, but that's probably because I don't know as much about it. I learned of Photobuckets existence through a friend who was showing me how to put pictures the profile of a certain other site which I will no longer mention. You can upload image from the web via url, from your computer or from a phone. You can also upload videos. You can create abums and sub albums, but I don't yet know if there's a limit to the amount of albums you can have (If there is I haven't reached it yet). I have 8 albums, and each contain 3 - 6 sub albums, and there's a lot of photos in some of those albums. You can choose whether or not you want your albums to be public or private too. Sometimes a private album is a good idea, otherwise your photos are avaible to everyone on the web. Which unfortunately some people learn to their cost. Photobucket can be ideal if you want quick access to your photos while posting in forums or uploading a photo to a profile. I will say that their TOS (Terms of Service) sometimes seems a little strict. I've had photos deleted in the past which really didn't deserve to be. Although the opposite is also true. I've had photo's that should perhaps have been deleted but weren't. Anyway Photobucket is very easy to use and they've made it even easier now because they have a new Photobucket Toolbar (well new to me, I've only seen it recently). I always find myself browsing the web and seeing an image I like. So as you can upload images directly to the toolbar it's a good thing in my opinion. :) Well that's Photobucket (also in a slightly large nutshell). So moving onto...

Playlist / Project Playlist. A website where you can search for music and build a playlist to go on a number of profiles such as Myspace, Facebook, Gaia Online, Friendster, on your Blog or Personal Website or to just play on playlist while you're surfing the web. I haven't been on playlist for a while. It makes me wonder if they now have a toolbar. I don't think they do. It's pretty cool being able to build your own playlist, and better still, you can make as many as you want. There are a couple of minor drawbacks. For example: You're not always going to be able to find what you want, which brings me to drawback (If you want to call it that) #2 - Which is, you can't upload songs from your computer. If they had a toolbar like Photobucket and you could upload songs to your playlist from your computer it would be excellent. Facebook's playlist had an upload feature. However you were limited to 20 uploads. It's not all that bad that you can't upload to Playlist. If you find the url of the song you want you can always paste the link into a box and add it yourself. All in all it's a good sight. They all are in certain ways. I think if anyone was at all interested they would have checked them out for themselves by now. So maybe I just wasted my time writing all that....

Nah.. I don't regret it either [I like the sound of my own thoughts]. Not really. It's nice to think that maybe someone might read it one day. Maybe someone will even find out something they didn't know.