History of Social Networking
Internet has come a long way from simple chatting, emailing and then social networking which exist as early as the 90s. However, only in the millennium did the popularity of the social networking sites escalate. Today, the most popular social networking sites are Facebook and Myspace in America while Friendster is in Asia. To date, the web is estimated to have over 200 social networking all over the world.
In 1995 Classmates.com allowed users to affiliate and connect with their high school friends. Sixdegrees.com in 1998 take it a higher level by providing users a profile along with a list of friends and connections with other networks. However, the sites were shut down later on for lack of fundings and revenues.
There are many social networking sites in between 1998 to 2001 but none really made a big difference until the creation of ryze.com. The people behind Ryze, Tribe.net, Linkedln and Friendster are interconnected in some ways. But, it is Friendster that made a big break and making a big difference too.
In the USA, when Friendster (2002) was first created by Jonathan Abrams, it became popular for a year and then declined which was soon called “the biggest disappointments in Internet History”. However, its failure in the United States will soon be a success in Asia.
The main reason why Friendster popularity has declined is due to the creation of Myspace.com in 2003 which was founded by Tom Logan. The new site offers many features. Myspace still enjoy its popularity in the US despite the many emerging social network sites like Facebook (2004) founded by Mark Zuckerberg, Bebo (2005) founded by the couple Michael and Xochi Birch, and Hi5 (2003) founded by Uday Ranjeet. Since, there are so many emerging social networking in the Internet today, all vying for you to sign up, I just reviewed four of the best sites in the Web that many people usually visit.
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