Social Network Literature and History
This table is based on the work in progress article "SNS History" from Danah Boyd, which tries to draw the history of social network sites.
Profile centric
Sites, where a personal profile has to be created and links to friends are displayed.
| year | name | type/description |
|---|---|---|
| 1997 | SixDegrees.com | First Network, that allowed public profile and friend list |
| 1999 | LiveJournal.com | Blogging system and blog hoster with addition buddy list functions. |
| 2000 | Xanga.com | Livejournal clone |
| 2000 | SkyBlog.com | Livejournal clone |
| 2001 | CyWorld.com | Korean social network |
| 2001 | Ryze.com | first business oriented social network |
| 2002 | Friendster.com | social complement to ryze.com |
| 2003 | LinkedIn.com | business oriented social network |
| 2003 | Tribe.net | designed for classifieds but adopted by the Burning Man community |
| 2003 | MySpace.com | to compete with friendster |
| 2004 | Orkut.com | Google's social network to compete with myspace.com, became very popular in Brazil |
| 2004 | Mixi.jp | Japan |
| 2004 | Lunarstorm.se | Sweden |
| 2004 | Grono.net | Poland |
| 2004 | Hi5.com | Smaller south american countries |
| 2004 | Xing.com (openBC) | Germany/Europe business oriented social network |
| 2004 | Bebo.com | United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Australia |
| 2004 | Facebook.com | Social network for students |
| 2005 | studivz.net | German social network for students |
Application centric
Sites with a specific goal/target group and added social network features.
| year | name | type/description |
|---|---|---|
| 2003 | del.ico.us | social bookmarking |
| 2003 | last.fm | music recommendation social network |
| 2004 | flickr.com | photo sharing social network |
| 2005 | youtube.com | video sharing social network |
List of social network publications:
Historically we can see a shift in the primary focus of networking/network sites, also. As Paul DiPerma suggested in his paper "The Web Connector Model: New Implications for Social Change" sites in the early phases used the created network to find/match a single person (node) to another. The main reason was finding an appropriate match. Sites like match.com, classmates.com or ebay.com (a bit far). The second wave that we now see uses the network for personal or professional use to keep in touch with your contacts (either on- or offline contacts).
References
