Social networking has evolved greatly since its origins in the 1970s. Early social networking started with Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) in the 1970s, which allowed users to communicate over telephone lines. Services like CompuServe and AOL in the 1980s expanded this, introducing chat forums, private messaging, and profiles. In the 1990s, sites like Classmates.com and SixDegrees helped establish the modern concept of social networking by allowing users to create profiles and connect with others. Popular sites in the 2000s like Friendster, LinkedIn, MySpace, and Facebook drew tens and then hundreds of millions of users by refining features like friend connections, shared media, and open platforms. While Facebook remains dominant today,

1. THE HISTORY OF SOCIAL NETWORKING
By Gordon Goble — September 6, 2012
This article is a belongs to the website www.digitaltrends.com
Multiple members of the Digital Trends’ staff contributed this article, which has been updated since
its original publication.
Introduction
Long before it became the commercialized mass information and entertainment
juggernaut it is today, long before it was accessible to the general public, and certainly
many years before Al Gore claimed he “took the initiative in creating” it, the Internet –
and its predecessors – were a focal point for social interactivity. Granted, computer
networking was initially envisioned in the heyday of The Beatles as a military-centric
command and control scheme. But as it expanded beyond just a privileged few hubs and
nodes, so too did the idea that connected computers might also make a great forum for
discussing mutual topics of interest, and perhaps even meeting or renewing
acquaintances with other humans. In the 1970s, that process began in earnest.
Mullets may have reigned supreme in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, but – as many will
surely recall – computers were a far rarer commodity. The machines’ language was
bewildering, and their potential seemingly limited. What’s more, this whole sitting-in-
front-of-a-keyboard thing was so… isolationistic. Put all this together and you have a
medium where only the most ardent enthusiasts and techno-babbling hobbyists dared
tread. It was, in effect, a breeding ground for pocket-protector-wearing societal rejects,
or nerds. And boring, reclusive nerds at that. Yet it also was during this time, and with a
parade of purportedly antisocial geeks at the helm, that the very gregarious notion of
social networking would take its first steps towards becoming the omnipresent cultural
phenomenon we know and love in 2009.

2. BBS, AOL and CompuServe: The Infant Years
It started with the BBS. Short for Bulletin Board System, these online meeting places
were effectively independently-produced hunks of code that allowed users to
communicate with a central system where they could download files or games (many
times including pirated software) and post messages to other users. Accessed over
telephone lines via a modem, BBSes were often run by hobbyists who carefully
nurtured the social aspects and interest-specific nature of their projects – which, more
often than not in those early days of computers, was technology-related. Moreover, long
distance calling rates usually applied for out-of-towners, so many Bulletin Boards were
locals-only affairs that in turn spurred local in-person gatherings. And voila, just like
that, suddenly the antisocial had become social.
The BBS was no joke. Though the technology of the time restricted the flexibility of
these systems, and the end-user’s experience, to text-only exchanges of data that
crawled along at glacial speed, BBSes continued to gain popularity throughout the ‘80s
and well into the ‘90s, when the Internet truly kicked into gear. Indeed, some services –
such as Tom Jennings’ FidoNet – linked numerous BBSes together into worldwide
computer networks that managed to survive
the Internet revolution.
But there were also other avenues for social
interaction long before the Internet exploded
onto the mainstream consciousness. One such
option was CompuServe, a service that began
life in the 1970s as a business-oriented
mainframe computer communication solution,
but expanded into the public domain in the
late 1980s.
CompuServe allowed members to share files
and access news and events. But it also
offered something few had ever experienced –
true interaction. Not only could you send a
message to your friend via a newfangled
technology dubbed “e-mail” (granted, the
concept of e-mail wasn’t exactly newfangled
at the time, though widespread public access
to it was). You could also join any of
CompuServe’s thousands of discussion
forums to yap with thousands of other
members on virtually any important subject of the day. Those forums proved
tremendously popular and paved the way for the modern iterations we know today.
But if there is a true precursor to today’s social networking sites, it was likely spawned
under the AOL (America Online) umbrella. In many ways, and for many people, AOL
was the Internet before the Internet, and its member-created communities (complete
with searchable “Member Profiles,” in which users would list pertinent details about
themselves), were arguably the service’s most fascinating, forward-thinking feature.

3. Yet there was no stopping the real Internet, and by the mid-1990s it was moving full
bore. Yahoo had just set up shop, Amazon had just begun selling books, and the race to
get a PC in every household was on. And, by 1995, the site that may have been the first
to fulfill the modern definition of social networking was born.
The Internet Boom: Social Networking’s Adolescence
Though differing from many current social networking sites in that it asks not “Who can
I connect with?” but rather, “Who can I connect with that was once a schoolmate of
mine?” Classmates.comproved almost immediately that the idea of a virtual reunion
was a good one. Early users could not create profiles, but they could locate long-lost
grade school chums, menacing school bullies and maybe even that prom date they just
couldn’t forget. It was a hit almost immediately, and even today the service boasts some
540 million registered accounts.
That same level of success can’t be said for
SixDegrees.com. Sporting a name based on the theory
somehow associated with actor Kevin Bacon that no
person is separated by more than six degrees from
another, the site sprung up in 1997 and was one of the
very first to allow its users to create profiles, invite
friends, organize groups, and surf other user profiles.
Its founders worked the six degrees angle hard by
encouraging members to bring more people into the fold. Unfortunately, this
“encouragement” ultimately became a bit too pushy for many, and the site slowly de-
evolved into a loose association of computer users and numerous complaints of spam-
filled membership drives. SixDegrees.com folded completely just after the turn of the
millennium.
Other sites of the era opted solely for niche, demographic-driven markets. One was
AsianAvenue.com, founded in 1997. A product of Community Connect Inc., which
itself was founded just one year prior in the New York apartment of former investment
banker and future Community Connect CEO Ben Sun, AsianAvenue.com was followed
in 1999 by BlackPlanet.com, and in 2000 by the Hispanic-oriented MiGente.com. All
three have survived to this very day, with BlackPlanet.com in particular enjoying
tremendous success throughout its run. Indeed, according to current parent company
Radio One, which acquired Community Connect and its sites in April of 2008,
BlackPlanet.com presently attracts in excess of three million unique visitors every
month.
Friendster, LinkedIn, MySpace and Facebook: The Biz Grows Up
In 2002, social networking hit really its stride with the launch of Friendster. Friendster
used a degree of separation concept similar to that of the now-defunct SixDegrees.com,
refined it into a routine dubbed the “Circle of Friends” (wherein the pathways
connecting two people are displayed), and promoted the idea that a rich online
community can exist only between people who truly have common bonds. And it
ensured there were plenty of ways to discover those bonds.
An interface that shared many of the same traits one would find at an online dating site
certainly didn’t seem to hurt. (CEO Jonathan Abrams actually refers to his creation as a
dating site that isn’t about dating.) And, just a year after its launch, Friendster boasted
more than three million registered users and a ton of investment interest. Though the

4. service has since seen more than its fair share of technical difficulties, questionable
management decisions, and a resulting drop in its North American fortunes, it remains a
force in Asia and, curiously, a near-necessity in the Philippines.
Introduced just a year later in 2003, LinkedIn took a decidedly more serious, sober
approach to the social networking phenomenon. Rather than being a mere playground
for former classmates, teenagers, and cyberspace Don Juans, LinkedIn was, and still is,
a networking resource for businesspeople who want to connect with other professionals.
In fact, LinkedIn contacts are referred to as “connections.” Today, LinkedIn boasts
more than 175 million members.
More than tripling that number, according to recent estimates, is MySpace, also
launched in 2003. Though it no longer resides upon the social networking throne in
many English-speaking countries – that honor now belongs to Facebook just about
everywhere – MySpace remains the perennial favorite in the USA. It does so by
tempting the key young adult demographic with music, music videos, and a funky,
feature-filled environment. It looked and felt hipper than major competitor Friendster
right from the start, and it conducted a campaign of sorts in the early days to show
alienated Friendster users just what they were
missing.
It is, however, the ubiquitous Facebook that
now leads the global social networking pack.
Founded, like many social networking sites,
by university students who initially peddled
their product to other university students,
Facebook launched in 2004 as a Harvard-only exercise and remained a campus-oriented
site for two full years before finally opening to the general public in 2006. Yet even by
that time, Facebook was seriously big business, with tens of millions of dollars already

5. invested, and Silicon Valley bigwigs such as billionaire PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel
firmly behind it.
The secret of Facebook’s success (it is currently just shy of 1 billion users) is a subject
of some debate. Some point to its ease of use, others to its multitude of easily-accessed
features, and still others to a far simpler factor – its memorable, descriptive name. A
highly targeted advertising model certainly hasn’t hurt, nor did financial injections, such
as the $60 million from noted Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-shing in 2007. Regardless,
there’s agreement on one thing – Facebook promotes both honesty and openness. It
seems people really enjoy being themselves, and throwing that openness out there for
all to see.
Pulling Ahead: How Facebook and Twitter won the web
Facebook is king for a reason. It wasn’t just through luck that Zuckerberg’s darling
came to regin supreme over the social media kingdom, it was in fact a series of smart
moves and innovative features that set FB apart from the rest of the social media pack.
First and foremost, the 2007 launch of the Facebook Platform was key to FB’s success.
This open API made it possible for third-party developers to create applications that
work within Facebook itself. Almost immediately after being released, the platform
gained a massive amount of attention. Today, there are hundreds of thousands of apps
built on the platform – so much that Facebook has recently launched the Facebook App
Store to organize and display them all.
Twitter created its own API and enjoyed similar success as a result.
The other key to success was Facebook’s ubiquitous ‘Like’ button which broke free
from the bounds of the site and began appearing all over the internet. Now you can
‘like’ or “tweet’ just about everything even when you’re not on Facebook or Twitter
Realizing the power of social networking, Google decided in 2011 to launch their own
social network: Google+. It differed from Facebook and Twitter in that it wasn’t
necessarily a full-featured networking site, but rather a social “layer” of the overall
Google experience. Initially, Google generated a lot of buzz with G+’s Hangouts
feature, which allowed users to enter live video chats with other online friends. At the
time of launch, Facebook was scrambling to keep up by integrating a video chat feature
of their own.
Within just four weeks, G+ had gathered 25 million unique visitors. As of June 2012, it
had a total of 250 million registered users. It definitely didn’t dethrone Zuckerberg’s
behemoth, but it’s clearly here to stay, and arguably showed the world that there was
still room for innovation and competition in the realm of social networking.
The Future of Social Networks
What does the future of social networking look like? Judging from a few recent
developments, the social media of the future might be open source or even community-
run. Take a look at App.Net, a site that’s been described a more open, advertising-free
and developer-friendly alternative to Twitter. App.net launched an alpha version back in
August, and thus far things seem to be going swimmingly for the site.

6. The company compares its service to how Twitter functioned “before it turned into a
media company.” The platform is also open to developers to create apps that’ll help
make the App.net more useful. Will it work out? It’s far too early to tell, but the site has
already gathered over 10,000 users and has generated quite a buzz from tech pundits
and developers.
App.Net isn’t the only game in town when it comes to disrupting the social media status
quo, however. Whereas App.net is a direct contention of Twitter’s model for social
networking, Diaspora is an open source, community-run social network that is quite
similar to Facebook in appearance and operation. Similar to App.net, Diaspora became
a reality after a successful Kickstarter campaign and has been growing steadily ever
since. It’s been available to the public for over a year now and just recently turned over
the reigns to the public.
No site has even made Facebook or Twitter bat an eye, but with the unstable landscape
of the Internet and the ever-changing ways we use and interact with it, this may not
remain true in the future.