Social Media, "Back in the Day"

 It is hard to believe, but social networking sites have started a while before Facebook and MySpace. Even though people in our generation are familiar with the sites mentioned above, social networking started to blossom earlier, and we just were not aware of it. It is unsure what the exact date is of the first social networking site because online dating sites are considered social networks, but Six Degrees is considered the first “modern” social networking site. It was launched in 1997 and allowed users to create a profile and become friends with other users, essentially what Facebook does for us in today’s day in age. Six Degrees went off the idea of “six degrees of separation” and allowed you to send messages and post bulletin board items to people in their first, second, and third degree groups. However Six Degrees did not last that long, as it shut down in 2001. Although the site did not prove to be so popular, at one point it reached its peak at around a million members.  

After Six Degrees went public, other social networking sites started to become better known and out there for more people to use.

Another popular early social networking site that came about was Friendster.com. Friendster went public in 2002 and allowed users to contact other members of the site just like the other social networking sites. Friendster also permitted users to share videos, photos, and comments with other users of the site. An interesting thing about Friendster was that is also acted as a dating website and allowed its members to discover new events, bands, hobbies, and etc. Friendster gained much publicity as it had around three million users within the first few months of starting. Friendster started to grow so popular that Google offered to buy it out in 2003, but they declined and continued on their own. They have gotten a lot of funding from other companies, but their decision to stay private instead of selling to Google is considered one of the biggest mistakes. Friendster.com still remains active today, but has just been pushed back behind more popular sites like Facebook and MySpace.

Even online dating sites are considered social networks and have been around for much longer than we think.

Similarly, a popular and older social networking site was created called eCrush. eCrush is considered a online dating website which is comprised of two major sites, eSPIN.com and eCRUSH.com. eSPIN took on a “spin-the-bottle” approach where users would simply spin the bottle to find other users to be matched up with. So the two merged and stayed with the name of eCrush and is a site where the user creates a list of people they are interested in and they can send an anonymous email to any of those people. This would indicate that they have a “crush” on them and if two people select each other, then it is a match. eCrush was launched on Valentines day of 1999 and currently the site is no longer in use.

Social networking sites come and go

Just as Friendster and Six Degrees had their run, so will other social networking sites. I think a reason why sites like those aren’t as popular today is because something new and more advanced has come out to replace it. If you think about it, Friendster is just like Facebook, but Facebook allows its users to do so much more. It one-upped Friendster and MySpace and all the other sites in between. That is why Facebook is so hot right now and all those older ones are not. With new technology arising every day, people are always trying to one-up their competitors. Mark Zuckerberg had the chance to do that and made Facebook such a popular site that even our grandparents have Facebook’s. But Facebook is already starting to see its course run out. People are already finding and using new social media websites like Twitter and Instagram that are starting to outshine Facebook. In an interesting article in Yahoo News, they talk about how Facebook is losing its popularity. Facebook has seen a 1.1% drop in U.S. users and has been ranked below Google+ in an American Consumer Satisfaction Index. I think it is only natural that new websites and trends come about every couple of months. People get sick of things quickly, just as things get “old” quickly. It is just the way the world works, something new and better will always attract people. I think the old social media websites like Friendster and Six Degrees could have gained the popularity of Facebook, but they have been replaced. Friendster at a point had one million users and Six Degrees attracted a lot of people, but they have been substituted by a newer and better social media website.