So I signed up for an account, yet I was still unable to decipher what exactly it is. It says its a network 100K strong of coders and has the occasional competition. But I'm not sure what content is there to occupy time spending a year "playing top coder".
I think the main page seems confusing because much it is targeted toward businesses looking to have the site's users develop projects via contests.
If you click on Community->Developer it gets a little less confusing and shows a variety of contests. You can find some algorithm contests at Competitions->Algorithm->Single Round Matches->Launch Arena.
When I try this, I get an error message related to Java. When I last used the site, I ended up installing Java WebStart, downloading a JAR file for the arena, and running the JAR file from the commandline.
Overall TopCoder seems like more of a hassle to get started with than it should; fortunately, other sites like YC-funded HackerRank exist, although I'm not sure how the actual content and community compare.
