|
|
|
|
HISTORY OF SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES We have chosen to define social networking sites as possessing these three key features: 1) They let people create profiles within a fixed system. 2) People can build lists of other users they are connected to. 3) These lists can be viewed by both the creator and other users.
Six Degrees
The first website to meet the three criteria to qualify it as a social networking site was SixDegrees.com, launched in 1997. It was meant to aid people in connecting and sending messages to others and managed to draw millions of users, but the profits failed to roll in and the site closed down in 2000. This was attributed to several causes: a majority of its users did not have large networks of friends who were online, there was a distinct lack of things to do other than accepting friend requests, and most people did not want to meet strangers. In a nutshell, SixDegrees was simply too revolutionary for its time.
Asianave
Between 1997 and 2001, several social networking sites sprang up, including AsianAvenue, BlackPlanet, MiGente, LiveJournal, Cyworld and LunarStorm. A number of these sites did not actually start off as social networking services, but were subsequently altered and repositioned as such. Some of these, such as BlackPlanet and Cyworld, continue to be successful today, while others, such as AsianAvenue, have dropped greatly in popularity.
Ryze
In 2001, the business network-oriented Ryze.com was founded. While the site never really broke into the mainstream, the creators had close ties with the people behind several other social networking sites launched shortly afterwards, namely Tribe.net, LinkedIn and, most significantly, Friendster, which was originally meant to be the social counterpart of Ryze. Friendster’s arrival onto the scene in 2002 heralded a new age in social networking.
Couch Surfing
In the years after Friendster’s initial surge, many new social networking sites flooded the market. While a majority attempted to replicate Friendster’s formula and attract a wide audience, some zoomed in on niche areas. Visible Path and Xing targeted business people, Dogster linked users based on common interests, Care2 focused on activists, Couchsurfing brought travellers and couch-owners together, and MyChurch connected Christians with their churches. One of the most significant websites launched in the wake of Friendster’s success was MySpace in 2003.
Mixi
Although MySpace grew to dominate the U.S. social networking scene, it was not quite as successful in other parts of the globe. From Mixi in Japan to Grono in Poland, the top social networking sites of different countries varied wildly. However, in terms of global media coverage and cultural significance, MySpace faced little competition – until the arrival of Facebook in 2004.
Myspace
MySpace started quietly in 2003 as a competitor to sites like Friendster, Xanga and AsianAvenue. In fact, one of its target audiences was disenfranchised Friendster users, and it successfully lured over many such people. One important group MySpace managed to attract was indie-rock bands, many of whom were banished from Friendster for not following profile regulations. Unlike Friendster, MySpace welcomed these bands, and actively sought to establish a good working relationship. Numerous bands created profiles and promoted their gigs on MySpace, which drew large numbers of fans to the site. These ranged from teenagers to young adults, and caused MySpace to change its policy and accept minors as members. MySpace demonstrated its commitment to improvement by constantly adding user-requested features and letting users customize their pages. This distinguished the site from other social networking applications available at the time. Although its popularity was rapidly increasing, it flew under the radar of the mainstream press and was thus relatively unknown until 2005. In July 2005, MySpace was bought over by News Corporation for US$580 million, which drew huge media coverage. This marked the start of social networking sites as big business.
FriendSter
Founded in 2002, Friendster was supposed to compete with the online dating site Match.com. It aimed to help friends-of-friends meet, and attracted 300,000 users before the press caught wind of the site. Thanks to the power of mainstream media, Friendster’s popularity and user base increased greatly. However, this created several problems. On the technical side, Friendster’s servers and databases were unable to cope with the site’s speedy growth. On the social side, the old and new communities of Friendster users did not mesh well. Additionally, there was also a disconnect between the company’s vision and what the users wanted, as illustrated by the following example. Initially, users could only see profiles of others within four degrees of separation, so to view more profiles, people started adding acquaintances and strangers. Eventually, some started trying to collect as many friends as possible, motivated by a “most popular” feature. The biggest collectors were Fakesters: false profiles denoting fictional entities such as celebrities and ideas. While fraudulent, Fakesters were treated by most as entertaining and even useful, but in the end, all fake profiles and the “most popular” feature were removed. All these problems led to the departure of many early adopters. While it was at one point the social networking site to beat, Friendster’s popularity has been waning, and this trend looks to continue for the foreseeable future.
HISTORY OF FACEBOOK
Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in February 2004 while he was a psychology undergraduate at Harvard University. Prior to this, Zuckerberg had created several other social networking sites, such as Coursematch, which let people see who else was taking their degree, and Facemash, a site which allowed users to rate people’s looks. Originally called “The Facebook”, the site was initially only open to Harvard students. It proved tremendously popular, with 1,200 students joining within the first 24 hours. After the first month, more than half the Harvard undergraduate community had signed up. The site then rapidly expanded its coverage, opening up to other universities, high schools, companies and, by September 2006, anyone with a valid email address. Along the way, it became Facebook.com after buying the domain name for US$200,000. As a result of its meteoric rise, several companies sought to acquire Facebook, including heavyweights like Google and Yahoo, but Zuckerberg has rebuffed all offers thus far, some of which were as high as US$2 billion. Also, Facebook was taken to court shortly after its launch in 2004 by the owners of social networking site ConnectU, and the case lasted until early 2007. Meanwhile, Facebook has continued to evolve, with features such as virtual gift-giving and free classified advertisements being added. By July 2007, Facebook had 30 million users, and is the biggest social networking site with an educational focus
|
|
|
