History
The potential for computer networking to facilitate newly improved forms of computer-mediated social interaction was suggested early on.[8] Efforts to support social networks via computer-mediated communication were made in many early online services, including Usenet[9], ARPANET, LISTSERV, and bulletin board services (BBS). Many prototypical features of social networking sites were also present in online services such as America Online, Prodigy, CompuServe, and The WELL[10]. Early social networking on the World Wide Web began in the form of generalized online communities such as Theglobe.com (1995),[11] Geocities (1994) and Tripod.com (1995). Many of these early communities focused on bringing people together to interact with each other through chat rooms, and encouraged users to share personal information and ideas via personal webpages by providing easy-to-use publishing tools and free or inexpensive webspace. Some communities - such as Classmates.com - took a different approach by simply having people link to each other via email addresses. In the late 1990s, user profiles became a central feature of social networking sites, allowing users to compile lists of "friends" and search for other users with similar interests. New social networking methods were developed by the end of the 1990s, and many sites began to develop more advanced features for users to find and manage friends.[12] This newer generation of social networking sites began to flourish with the emergence of SixDegrees.com in 1997,[13] followed by Makeoutclub in 2000,[14][15] Hub Culture and Friendster in 2002,[16] and soon became part of the Internet mainstream. Friendster was followed by MySpace and LinkedIn a year later, and eventually Bebo. Attesting to the rapid increase in social networking sites' popularity, by 2005, it was reported that MySpace was getting more page views than Google.