Simple Social Network History

By yavdat

  • Sixdegrees and MakeOutClub

    Web of Contacts model of social networking. The early birds Sixdegrees and MakeOutClub, though innovative at the time, didn’t last very long. The websites are still available, but today they are mainly a destination for a limited number of nostalgic members.

  • Friendster

    In an attempt to survive as a member technology platform, Friendster was recently redesigned into a social gaming platform and their traditional social networking accounts have been disabled. They are now owned by Asian MOL and claim to have over 115 million users.

  • MySpace

    Myspace, which was acquired by Murdoch’s News Corporation in 2005, was considered the leading social network by late 2007 early 2008. In 2008 Myspace attracted 75.9 million monthly unique visitors in the U.S. On June 29th, 2011, it was announced that Myspace was acquired by Specific Media and Justin Timberlake for $35m. It will be fascinating to see if new, young blood can revive this once so shining star.

  • LinkedIn

    LinkedIn, which was founded before Facebook, has not seen the same growth in member sign-ups. However, they are still growing and today they have over 120 million users. I believe the success of LinkedIn is their unique positioning, instead of being a “social” network; they focus on “professional” networking.

  • Facebook

    There is no doubt that Facebook is the big winner in the last decades’ social networking marathon. Today they have over 800 million users and they have been adopted by various age groups in countries across the globe. Today, 75% of their users are outside the US.

  • Bebo

    Bebo, another social networking site which was launched in 2005 and highly popular in the UK and Ireland was acquired by AOL for the staggering amount of $850m in March 2008. Unable to keep the social network alive, AOL announced in 2010 that they were pulling the plug or selling the social network. They indeed sold it after only two years of ownership to Criterion Capital Partners in 2010 at a non-disclosed amount that is rumored to have been a fraction of what AOL paid.

  • Twitter

    Twitter, is a social networking and micro-blogging site, the “micro” means that you can post messages that are only 140 characters long, some refer to it as the “SMS of the Internet”. Twitter has been very successful in gaining momentum, they now have over 100 million active users (though if you count all users the number is much higher – over 200 million).

  • Foursquare

    Even though not a major player in terms of members, (currently over 10 million users) I want to add Foursquare in this section. Foursquare is a location-based, mobile, social network that allows users to “check-in” to venues using their mobile phone. The original purpose of Foursquare was to make it more convenient for friends to meet up and share feedback about various venues.

  • Google+

    The final social network to cover is Google+ which was launched on June 28th, 2011. At the time of launch it was only open to invited members but on September 30th it opened up to the public. It is the fastest growing social network to date, with now over 40 million users.