The Start of Social Media Networking
Technology began to change very rapidly in the 20th Century. After the first super computers were created in the 1940s, scientists and engineers began to develop ways to create networks between those computers, and this would later lead to the birth of the Internet.
The earliest forms of the Internet, such as CompuServe, were developed in the 1960s. Primitive forms of email were also developed during this time. By the 70s, networking technology had improved, and 1979’s UseNet allowed users to communicate through a virtual newsletter.
By the 1980s, home computers were becoming more common and social media was becoming more sophisticated. Internet relay chats, or IRCs, were first used in 1988 and continued to be popular well into the 1990’s.
The first recognizable social media site, Six Degrees, was created in 1997. It enabled users to upload a profile and make friends with other users. In 1999, the first blogging sites became popular, creating a social media sensation that’s still popular today.
SixDegrees.com was a social network service website that lasted from 1997 to 2001 and was based on the Web of Contacts model of social networking. It was named after the six degrees of separation concept and allowed users to list friends, family members and acquaintances both on the site and externally; external contacts were invited to join the site. Users could send messages and post bulletin board items to people in their first, second, and third degrees, and see their connection to any other user on the site. It was one of the first manifestations of social networking websites in the format now seen today. Six Degrees was followed by more successful social networking sites based on the "social-circles network model" such as Friendster, MySpace, LinkedIn, XING, and Facebook.
MacroView (later renamed to SixDegrees), the company that developed the site, was founded by CEO Andrew Weinreich and was based in New York City. At its height, SixDegrees had around 100 employees, and the site had around 3,500,000 fully registered members. The site was bought by YouthStream Media Networks in 1999 for $125 million.
This first evolutionary step lasted pretty long, let’s say from the beginning of the new century until 2007. In this phase many services evolved and started to woo users. It was during this period that many of the social sites appeared that later became huge, like :
Even Facebook was founded during that first period, though it was open only to students of Harvard University students in the beginning.
The first evolutionary step was characterized by so called “Walled Gardens”, that means destinations which were totally separated from the outside web, with no interaction between the service and external websites. The competing sites aimed at getting as many registered users as possible to reach a critical mass. That was important to leverage “network effects”, which are necessary to reach exponential growth.
Friendster was a social gaming site based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It was originally a social networking service website. Before Friendster was redesigned, the service allowed users to contact other members, maintain those contacts, and share online content and media with those contacts. The website was also used for dating and discovering new events, bands and hobbies. Users could share videos, photos, messages and comments with other members via profiles and networks. It is considered one of the original and even the "grandfather" of social networks.
We wouldn’t be able to discuss the start of social media if we didn’t discuss