In a nutshell, social networking sites are web-based services that enable people to create a public profile, allowing them to communicate with both strangers and people already in their existent social network (Boyd & Ellison 2007).
They began in 1997 with the birth of SixDegrees.com which encouraged people to send messages to each other electronically.
From there they blossomed and became one of the world’s most popular ways of communicating, particularly among young people.
Here is a timeline detailing their relatively short but intriguing history.
1997: SixDegrees.com
Although it was innovative in that it combined many features other social networking sites did not, the site failed to sustain itself in the long run. This was partly due to the low number of people with an online presence and partly to the site’s limited interactive applications.
2001: Ryze
A niche business-oriented social network site, aimed at strengthening professional and personal bonds across companies, without that air of competition. Yet the site’s personalization caused its downfall and it never attracted mass appeal.
2002: Friendster
An online dating site which focused on introducing friends-of-friends rather than strangers because it believed they would prove better matches. Although the site was initially popular boasting 300,000 users, it encountered many technical and social difficulties. These included slow servers and a restrictive design, which led users to create fake profiles of celebrities and fictional characters, to expand their reach. The site’s deletion of these ‘Fakesters’ caused an outrage and resulted in many users leaving the site permanently because of its failure to meet user interest.
2003: MySpace
Hit off by indie-rock bands alienated by Friendster, MySpace rapidly grew by accommodating a band-and-fans relationship, creating a personal ’space’ for this. Users needs were also met, unlike with Friendster, by allowing them to personalize their profiles using HTML. In 2004, teens started joining Myspace en masse which was accelerated by News Corporation purchasing the site for $580 million in 2005 and attracting mass media attention.
2004: Facebook
Initially intended for college networks (Harvard, US) to create a sense of an intimate online community, Facebook spiralled into serving mass communities in 2005. Unlike other sites, Facebook
allows users to determine the extent to which their profile is public, assigning them their long sought after independence and flexibility. Much like MySpace, users can also personalize their profiles through ‘Applications’ such as the sending of virtual gifts. It is now the most used social networking site, boasting over 350 million users worldwide.
2005: YouTube
An Adobe Flash video sharing website, displaying a broad range of user-generated content including film and TV clips, music videos and original, amateur blogs or videos. Although unregistered users can still watch content, registered viewers are free to upload, rate and also comment on videos of their choice. Bought by Google in 2006, media companies such as the BBC and Universal Music Group (UMG) also share their material via the site. It has been ranked the fourth most visited website, following Google, Yahoo and Facebook. Despite some of its copyrighted material and inappropriate content, its simple interface and diverse collection of topics has won it many awards including the George Foster Peabody Award (2008).
2006: Twitter
A new microblogging site, originally called twttr, allowing users to send messages of up to 140 characters known as tweets to their subscribers, known as followers. Like Facebook, Twitter accommodates restricted and open delivery. Another attractive quality of Twitter is its intertexuality; the ability to send tweets via the website and Short Message Service (SMS) – it’s been crowned ‘SMS of the Internet’. Although it has been labelled ‘modern narcissim’ and an absurdity which drains phone credit, Twitter has proved immensely successful, with a ‘remarkably simple’ interface and 14 millions users in the US alone.
2010: Google Buzz
Building on the idea of Twitter, Google Buzz targets a more niche market of Gmail users, allowing them to automatically and conveniently follow existing friends. Like Twitter, intertextuality is integrated in the form of photos (Flickr), videos (YouTube) and links (Twitter) where privacy can also be altered accordingly. With its recent extension to Google Apps and mobile phones, you can now tag your exact geographical location with Google Maps and easily, yet uncomfortably, track your friends. However, this concept of privacy settings has already been heavily criticised, attacking the way that Google Buzz publicly lists the user’s Gmail contacts by default. Within just days, thousands have been manically blogging on Technorati; most arguing that the concern over privacy is a ridiculous overstatement, revealing people’s ignorance of the way social networking sites truly operate.
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