Google have recently launched their very own Social Networking site, Google Buzz, hoping to compete with the king of all social networking sites, Facebook. With 350 million active users, Facebook is by far the largest of these sites, but it was by no means the first. Here is a brief look at the history of Social Networking Sites.
1980: Usenet was established in 1980, allowing users to post public messages to one or more categories, called newsgroups. It was a precursor to the various internet forums of today, and can be superficially regarded as a hybrid of web forums and email. Although not a social networking site as we know them, or even a website, Usenet can be regarded as the precursor to social networking, as it allowed users to freely share information and messages.
1995: Classmates was arguably the first social networking site, which linked users via email, focusing on ties between former schoolmates. In early 2008, Nielsen Online ranked Classmates as number three in unique monthly visitors among social networking sites.
1996: SixDegrees.com was a social network website that lasted from 1996-2001, named after the six degrees of separation theory. User profiles could be created, messages sent to users on “friends lists” and other members could be sought out who had similar interests to yours. This was the first website that included all of these features, which would become the standard model for later social network sites.
1999: LiveJournal is an internet community where users can keep a blog, post or diary, with some social networking features that set it apart from other blog sites. The most prominent of these is that each user has a friends list, giving the site a much more social aspect.
2002: Friendster was founded in 2002 and launched in 2003, and gained 3 million users within the first few months. It uses many features that are now considered standard on social network sites, before they were used on such sites as Myspace and Facebook. Today it has more than 115 million users, and is still popular, especially in Asia.
2003: Myspace became the most popular social networking site in the US in 2006. Owned by Fox Interactive Media, which in turn is owned by News Corporation, it became the first hugely successful social network in the US, setting the standard for future sites.
2005: Youtube was bought by Google inc. for $1.65 billion, and focuses on user generated content, specifically videos. This content ranges from TV and movie clips and music videos, to amateur video blogs and amateur short films. The popularity of some youtube users lead to them being made Youtube Partners, earning money for their work. “Youtube celebrities” are users who achieved such great popularity on youtube that they have even become well known outside of youtube.
2006: Facebook expanded on the features of Myspace, and eventually overtook it as the most popular social networking site in April 2008. It now has 350 million users, and a January 2009 Compete.com study ranked Facebook as the most used social network by worldwide monthly active users, followed by MySpace.
The Twitter Fail Whale, seen when there are just too many tweets.
2006: Twitter allows users to communicate via “tweets”, 140 character posts displayed on the author’s profile page and sent to their subscribers, known as “followers”. Twitter frequently suffers from “outages”, when their website can no longer handle all the messages being sent, displaying the message “Too many tweets! Please wait a moment and try again” accompanied by the “Fail whale”.
2010: Google Buzz is described as a “social integration and messaging tool” designed to integrate with the web based email program, Gmail. It allows users to share content publicly with the entire user base, or privately with a small group of friends. Seen by many as Google’s attempt to compete with Facebook, Buzz currently integrates Picasa, Flickr, Youtube, Twitter, Google Reader and Blogger.
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