Before Facebook (FB) became popular, there were a number of social networking sites that captured the attention of users, at least for a time. Lack of strategic planning, poor timing, or just plain bad luck contributed to the failure of these social media sites to achieve staying power. Three, in particular, remain in memory as fantastic upstarts that existed before Facebook came along and swept them all away as the dominant player in social media. In this article, we'll discuss what made Friendster, Myspace, and Second Life popular, and what eventually happened to each site. Show
At one point, Friendster was considered the premier social media site. Within just a few months of its launch, the company had more than three million monthly active users. In 2003, Friendster's founder, Jonathan Abrams, was offered $30 million by Google to purchase the site. Instead, Abrams chose to take on venture capital investment and try to grow the company. The company ended up falling apart. It was unable to manage the pace of new subscribers. Web pages routinely didn't load on time or at all. And a site redesign didn't seem worth bothering about. Friendster pretty much died in 2006, though with a strong following in some of the Asian markets it managed to survive a few more years. In 2011, it resurrected as a gaming site and remained live until 2015.
Research published by Cornell University says the main reason for Friendster's demise is that even though the site had millions of users in 2009, the links were not resilient enough between the networks people created to sustain their connection. MySpace burst onto the scene in 2003 when co-founders Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe and their friends—who were all employed by eUniverse (later Intermix Media, Inc.)—essentially copied Friendster's model but left out the features they didn't like or feel were necessary. MySpace focused on sound infrastructure and scalability. It became a place for users to build a personal community and house personal profiles, blogs, groups, photos, music, and videos. In 2005, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp bought Intermix Media, which owned MySpace, for $580 million. By that time, the social network had more than 20 million monthly users. At one point under News Corp, the website was valued at a whopping $12 billion. But, post-2007, Myspace experienced a fall from grace in the social media space, losing millions of users monthly to the rising site Facebook. Some reasons that have been discussed widely were an oversaturation of advertising, slow load times, and a loss of innovation where features were concerned. News Corp sold MySpace to Specific Media Group for $35 million. Notably, entertainer Justin Timberlake took an ownership stake in the company. The new MySpace was focused on music where users could access millions of musical tracks and videos. MySpace still exists today. Time, Inc. bought it from Viant (formerly Specific Media) in 2016. While not a traditional social media networking site, Second Life was at one point, one of the most popular ways to meet and interact with friends on the Internet. The website launched in 2003 by Linden Lab as a virtual world based on 3D modeling. The site aimed to empower users with the ability to interact with other people virtually, participate in jobs, and engage in other activities online through the use of an avatar. While the business model was different enough from Facebook that it never became a true direct competitor, Second Life became so popular at one point that people began to make legitimate livings through their avatars and tapping into the Second Life economy. Some Second Life users even felt more at home with their virtual avatars than they did in the real world. By 2013, Second Life had one million regular users. Similar to Friendster, Second Life's rapid growth in users caused the company to struggle with the stability of its infrastructure. In addition, the company was forced to comply with international laws that tried to regulate the money and activities that users were exchanging through the website. Security issues arose as well as a host of other problems, including pornography, intellectual property disputes, and fraud. These factors, coupled with the high growth and user adoption of Facebook, caused Second Life to falter and lose users month over month. Second Life remains operational by Linden Lab. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines social media as:
While services like YouTube and Facebook automatically come to mind, you can trace the origins of social media back to the late 1970s. In this article, you will find a brief overview of the history of social media, from the early pioneers of electronic communication to the social networking platforms that dominate the internet today. Bulletin Board SystemsRandy Suess and Ward Christensen introduced the Computerized Hobbyists Bulletin Board System in 1978. While initially designed to help the inventors network with fellow members of a computer club in Chicago and generate content for their club’s newsletter, it eventually grew to support 300-600 users. CBBS still exists today as a forum with posts dating back to 2000. As modems increased speed, bulletin board systems became more popular with computer users. Using the telnet BBS Guide, you can travel back in time and see over 1,000 bulletin board systems. For those looking for modernized versions of bulletin board systems, try Wikipedia’s list of internet forums. Internet Relay Chat, Instant Messaging, And Chat RoomsAs an extension of BBS systems, Jarkko Oikarinen set up the first Internet Relay Chat (IRC) client and server in 1988. It would allow users to chat with each other in real time. That would lay the groundwork for instant messaging services like mIRC and ICQ, which still exist today. While ICQ has continued to update its interface to match the current times, mIRC has had the same website since 2008. In 1992, America Online (AOL) became available to the public. By 1995, America Online’s 3 million users could interact via email, forums, and chat rooms. Celebrities like Michael Jackson used America Online chat rooms to host one of the first Ask Me Anything (AMA) sessions with over 25,000 participants. AOL released a free, standalone version of its instant messenger service in 1997, which connected its users until it signed off for the last time in 2017. In 1999, Tencent launched QQ, an instant messaging service. This service still exists today, along with the social network Qzone (launched in 2015), boasting 574 million users. The First Social NetworksIn 1997, the first social networking sites launched: Bolt and Six Degrees. Dan Pelson designed Bolt as a platform for 15-20-year-olds to use for email, voice mail, voice chat, message boards, and instant messaging. 11 years later, Bolt announced in its forums that it would shut down. Six Degrees founder Andrew Weinreich, sometimes referred to as the father of social networking, created his platform to help people connect with people they didn’t know (yet). He also filed the first social networking patent for:
The platform still exists today, although it doesn’t look like it has changed since 2017. The Birth Of Social BloggingIn 1998, Open Diary became the first online diary platform to bring together diarists, allowing them to share their thoughts and comment on others’ musings. Writers still use the site today to share their personal stories. A year later, in 1999, LiveJournal would enter the social blogging arena. In addition to sharing ideas and creating community through commenting, LiveJournal offered the ability to become friends with like-minded people, boosting the social appeal of blogging. From Social Dating To Social GamingFriendster, launched in 2002, was described as:
Its founder, Jonathan Abrams, filed several patents, including methods for connecting users based on their relationships, managing connections, and inducing content uploads in a social network. From 2010 until its end in 2015, Friendster shifted focus from a network for connecting friends to a “…social gaming destination of choice.” It allowed people to connect, play games, and share their progress. The Rise Of Today’s Most Popular Social PlatformsIn the early 2000s, we saw the launch of several of the top social networks still popular today. Launched in 2003, LinkedIn created a social networking space for professionals to strengthen their network connections for better career opportunities. It allows people to connect with business acquaintances and college alums, find jobs, and recommend professional services. Today, the network has over 830 million members worldwide. MyspaceShortly after LinkedIn, Myspace would launch in August 2003. It was a space for friends, where you could create customized profiles, highlight top favorite friends, meet your friend’s friends, publish blogs, share photos, post in forums, join groups, discover music, and play games. In 2013, Myspace rebranded itself as a music portal to connect people with their favorite artists and is a music-focused social network. 2004 saw the launch of Facebook (first known as Thefacebook). Created by Mark Zuckerberg to connect with other Harvard students, Facebook’s popularity exploded. By the end of 2004, it had over 1 million users. Since then, it has become the second largest social network, boasting 3 billion users worldwide. FlickrIn 2004, Flickr became the first social network for photo sharing. As of 2019, the network had over 100 million accounts and still considers itself the “…best online photo management and sharing application in the world.” In 2005, Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman launched Reddit as a place where users could share content, discuss topics of interest, and vote up the most popular stories. Reddit has since developed a base of over 430 million users, 100 thousand communities, and 13 billion posts and comments. In 2006, Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, Biz Stone, and Noah Glass launched Twitter. The idea behind their network was simple: allowing users to send short messages of up to 140 characters to friends and acquaintances. Now, Twitter’s user base of 436 million can send tweets with up to 280 characters with images and video. TumblrTumblr, founded in 2007 by David Karp, allows users to publish blogs, follow fellow bloggers, and comment on interesting content. The community, now managed by CEO Matt Mullenweg, founder of WordPress, has over 472 million users and 550 million blogs. Sina WeiboLaunched in 2009, Sina Weibo is China’s answer to Twitter. The microblogging service currently has 582 million users. Ben Silbermann, Evan Sharp, and Paul Sciarra founded Pinterest in 2010. The self-proclaimed visual discovery engine allows users to bookmark images as pins to create a virtual vision board full of ideas. The network is home to over 433 million users and 200 billion pins. 2010 also saw the launch of Instagram by founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger. The photo and video sharing service, acquired by Facebook in 2012, has grown to 1.4 billion users and expanded its features to include live video streaming and shoppable posts. QuoraFormer Facebook employees Adam D’Angelo and Charlie Cheever launched Quora in 2010. The social question-and-answer network aimed to bring together people with questions and experts in specific fields to provide answers. It is home to 300 million users, including former presidents and popular celebrities. SnapchatIn 2011, Stanford University students Evan Spiegel, Reggie Brown, and Bobby Murphy came up with Snapchat. While initially considered a “terrible idea” by fellow students in a product design class, this network would eventually become one of the top social networks for teens and home to over 347 million users. TelegramNikolai and Pavel Durov founded Telegram in 2013. The social app focuses on providing secure instant messaging and voice calls. It currently has over 700 million users. DiscordGaming enthusiasts Jason Citron and Stan Vishnevskiy founded Discord as a voice, video, and text communication service in 2015. Since its inception, it has expanded from focusing on the gaming community to giving spaces to any interested community looking for a place to belong. Discord is now home to over 150 million users and 19 million servers with 4 billion discussions. TikTokTikTok (or Douyin in China) launched internationally in 2017 after being acquired by ByteDance and merged with Musical.ly. Known as the leading destination for short-form mobile video, it has over 1 billion users and is the most downloaded app worldwide. ClubhousePaul Davison and Rohan Seth founded Clubhouse in 2020 as a social network for hosting voice chatrooms. While it began as invitation only, it is now open to the public and available for Apple and Android users. As of February 2021, it had 10 million weekly active users. Honorable MentionsUnfortunately, not all social networks found long-term success. In this section, you will find some notable names in social media history that came, made their mark and faded into the sunset. OrkutAround the time that Facebook and Flickr entered the social landscape, Google launched its first social network in 2004 – Orkut. It boasted 300 million members at its peak until it shuttered in 2014. Google+Another social product from Google, Google+, launched in 2011. Although it was integrated with Google’s other products, including YouTube, and boasted over 500 million “identity” users, it would eventually shut down in 2019. VineIn 2012, Colin Kroll, Rus Yusupov, and Dominik Hofmann launched a unique social video network, Vine. It allowed users to share short, looping videos. Twitter acquired the platform in 2013 but ultimately shut it down in 2019. PeriscopeLive-streaming video service Periscope launched in 2015 after being acquired by Twitter. Twitter ultimately incorporated live streaming into its network, shuttering Periscope as a standalone app in 2021. More resources: Featured Image: RoBird/Shutterstock |
What was the first social media site to reach a million monthly active users
Pos Terkait
Copyright © 2024 kemunculan Inc.
