History of Social Networking

Web 2.0 is a term first coined by Tim O’Reilly. Web 2.0 O’Reilly says, harness the collective intelligence. It is this collective intelligence with creates social networking.

One of the first sites to use social networking was Usenet. This was a moderated newsgroup that started in 1983.

America Online email service created buddy profiles for its members that were searchable by interest group, intended to link people. This was one of the preliminary attempts to create social networking. AOL began as Control Video Corporation in 1983. The cost was $49.95 for a modem. Originally a gaming venue, AOL created chat rooms, conference rooms and email for its members. It later merged with Time Warner. www.aol.com

One of the first sites to intentionally link people as an Internet social networking site was Classmates.com, which started in 1995. This was followed by a number of sites, such as SixDegrees, BlackPlanet, and Youthstream.

Friendster was created by Jonathan Abrams in 2002. Later that year, employees at eUniverse used some of the same features to create MySpace.com. MySpace is considered the largest of the social networks on the Internet. It has over 100 million members and over 300 staff members. It was purchased by Yahoo in 2005.www.myspace.com

 The year 2003 brought many newcomers, from LinkedIn to Tribe. Dogster, a MySpace spoof for dogs, was a 2004 addition to the humor and creativity that signifies social networking.www.linkedin.com

 Facebook launched in 2004 as well, and is now the second largest social network. It is geared to high school and college students. Launched in 2004, it how has over 8 million users in the United States, alone and is about to be launched in seven other countries.  It was created by a Harvard student, Mark Zuckerberg, and originally called thefacebook and at first only registered students at one of 30,000 colleges were allowed to be members. In 2006 this was changed so that anyone with an email account could join.www.facebook.com

 With the advent of MP3s and streaming video, not to mention the increased bandwidth available to most computer users now, the computer became an easier to use medium, with all-in-one capacity. Now, music, mail, telephone, information were all found in one spot—a computer screen.

 With rapid advancements in both technology and usage in the last few years, social networking is growing by leaps and bounds. Social network online is a phenomenon whose presence will increasingly influence our lives.