History of social networks

Social media as we know it — Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, etc. — is only 15 years old, and yet it feels as if they are permanent fixtures in our lives that have been with us forever. A look at the history of social media, however, shows how fleeting much of it is, and how few genuinely innovative developments there have been since the mid-1990s. The Globe.com, for instance, was the first big, modern form of social media, and it incorporated virtually all the concepts and communications you can currently see in Facebook. It imploded after only three years.

1994: TheGlobe.com invents social media

Cornell students Paternot and Krizelman founded this company after discovering a primitive chat room online at the university. The idea was similar to virtually every social media platform – for each user it had a chat room and messaging. TheGlobe.com went public on November 13, 1998, posting the largest first-day gain of any IPO in history to that date, 606% over the initial share price. It failed to generate significant advertising revenue and died in 2008. Lifetime: 14 years

1996: ICQ popularizes instant messaging

Although AOL Instant Messenger boosted the popularity of instant messages, its success was predated by ICQ, a free IM software from the Israeli company Mirabilis, founded in 1996. AIM followed in May 1997, and AOL later acquired ICQ. You can still download ICQ today. Lifetime: 15 years and counting.

1994: GeoCities invents user-created content

GeoCities provided customizable “home pages” for anyone who wanted them, and was probably one of the first major purveyors of user-created content. Individuals and businesses flocked to upload contact information and photos via its easy-to-use interface. Although GeoCities’ custom designs were famously amateurish and loud, it bore a striking resemblance to MySpace. GeoCities was ultimately acquired by Yahoo! and then closed in 2009. Its main competitor was Angelfire, founded in 1996, which still exists.

Lifetime: 13 years

1997: SixDegrees.com invents the social network

SixDegrees.com invented the social network via a series of contact lists through which one communicated with friends. Users were given bulletin boards, e-mail and online messaging if they agreed to hand over a list e-mail addresses for 10 friends. It closed in 2001. Lifetime: 4 years

1999: LiveJournal beats Blogger to market

Online diary keeping began in earnest with the debut of LiveJournal, the first of many sites to popularize blogging.It preceded Pyra Labs’ blogger software. by Google, which remains one of the dominant blog-hosting platforms. LiveJournal failed to keep up with Blogger and in 2009 most of its U.S. staff were laid off and remaining operations were moved to Russia. Lifetime: 12 years and counting

2002: Friendster “invents” friends

Friendster achieved what SixDegrees.com failed to do, which was to become popular through users’ overt collecting of “friends.” Although it attracted millions of users it was quickly eclipsed by the advent of Facebook in 2004. The site officially closed and deleted its users’ accounts in May 2011, vowing to reopen as an Asia-focused gaming web site. Lifetime: 9 years

2003: MySpace reinvents the homepage

Yet another attempt to give users custom homepages, messaging and photo-sharing, MySpace peaked in July 2005 when it was sold to News Corp. for $580 million. MySpace’s cluttered pages, which often blared the user’s favorite music, became a favorite of teens and the bands they followed. It began to lose users when the simpler, easier-to-use Facebook came along. In June 2011, MySpace was sold to a consortium which included Justin Timberlake for restructuring. Lifetime: 8 years and counting

2004: Facebook sucks the air out the room

Founded in a Harvard dormroom by Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook now has more than 750 million users. More importantly, it has seen off the competition and continues to grow. Facebook is deceptively simple to use, but has allowed so many different companies to promote ad-on apps that it can be customized in almost infinite ways. The company is expected to go public in 2012.

Lifetime: 7 years and counting

2006: Twitter reinvents the blog

At base, Twitter is just another blogging platform. Its genius lies in the realization that a lot of people want to keep some sort of blog but are either bad at writing or don’t want to write at length. The 140-character limit on each tweet also imposes a charming discipline on its users. The very first tweet (above) was published March 6, 2006. The service has more than 200 million users. Lifetime: 5 years and counting

2007: The iPhone takes social media mobile

Sure, there were smartphones that allowed people to update their various social media apps prior to the iPhone, but the Apple device made it easier and more fun. It is not a coincidence that social media has exploded following the rise of iPhone and Android smartphones. Prior to this year, “social” media often felt anti-social to use: to experience it, you had to be sitting at a desk or a laptop, and therefore often alone. Now people can share, message and update each other no matter where they are. Lifetime: 4 years and counting