The Evolution of Social Networking - Part 1

Online social networking has evolved immensely over the past 5 years. This first part in a 2 part series is meant to explore the past of social networking and where we are today. In my second part that I will post tomorrow, I will discuss what I believe is the future of social networking.

While most of this information will be old news to you it is meant to set up my post for tomorrow.

Period One – Anyone and Everyone

Most people agree that the first large site deemed “social networking” was Friendster. Friendster made the “friend of a friend” system popular and introduced the world to the popular profile pages. During this early period of social networking sites were aimed at anyone and everyone. There were no restrictions on who could sign up and this meant you could come across profiles of a 16 year old high school student or a 40 year old Kmart manager. Friendster had its moments, but soon became a joke in terms of producing revenue. Not too much is heard about friendster today, but they cleared the way for hundreds of other social networking possibilities.

Period Two – Targeted Demographics

Social networking quickly became a little more selective. People soon figured out that users only want to connect with others similar to them. The most obvious site that capitalized on this concept was college social networking site Facebook.com. Launched in early 2004, Facebook restricted access to those with a college .edu email address. Students soon found Facebook as a way to procrastinate their 10 page paper in exchange for seeing the latest on who was dating who in their network. Other sites like Orkut.com took on the business professional demographic and many other others such as ConnectU.com, CampusNetwork.com (no longer around), and PartyCampus.com (no longer around) attempted the college market as well.

Period Three – Subject Niches (Present Day)

Narrowing sites down to demographics soon evolved into orienting social networks around certain subjects. This is the stage I believe we are still in today. Sites such as Flickr.com focused on photos, Upcoming.org on events, Youtube.com on videos, and Eventful.com also on events and venues. Giant Myspace.com was an early adopter of the subject niche. They originally began as a social network revolving around bands and music. Myspace leveraged their substantial music user base and consistently added features to attract more users and keep the site new and fresh.

I think before this period is over we will see social networking sites on almost every subject. For example, one of my favorite new sites on the scene is ExtraTasty.com, a social network revolving around drink recipes.

[tags]Social Networking, Evolution, Myspace, Facebook, Extratasty, Youtube[/tags]