The Evolution of Social Networks

Where It All Started

For better or for worse, social networks have become part of our everyday life. Their relevance and importance and use has been increasing exponentially for quite some time. The origins of such networks can be traced back to the late 70s with the start of Usernets and BBSs (Bullettin Board Systems). BBSs were based on a centralised computer to which only one user could connect and have their say.

Through the late 80s, we saw the rise of Instant Messaging starting with IRC and ICQ. These allowed you to connect to a channel: chatroom, in which many other people were connected. ICQ was partly responsible for today's abbreviations such as LOL and BRB and emoticons.

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The Profile Era

The idea of have a profile, were you could portray your self and adorn it with a photo can be partially attributed to the early dating sites. These allowed users to find and contact other people. From roots of BBSs stemmed the rise of online forums, which are still very much in use today.

In 1997, Six Degrees approached today's concept of a social network, were you can become friends with other users and create your own profile. This site was shut down in 2001. While Six Degrees was on the rise in 1999, LiveJournal came up with the concept of encouraging users to keep a blog which they constantly update. This is reminiscent of the basis of most social networks today.

By 2002, we started seeing a different and more somewhat more cautious approach to social networking through Friendster. This network is based on helping you make new acquaintances by considering friends of your friends and assuming similar interests. In 2003, we saw the introduction of Hi5. Hi5 was hugely popular in Malta back in 2005-2006 and it centred around your friends, and friends of friends. At the same time, MySpace was also blooming. It was appealing due to the fact that it allowed an infinite number of custimisation options to your profile, leading to some pretty eye-watering, blinking and horribly colour-schemed profiles. My Space was and still remains quite popular with the music scene. Also at the same time, LinkedIn introduced a business aspect to social networking. It is nowadays quite sought after by employers and employees alike.

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Facebook; And The Rest Of Recent History

2004 saw the coming to fruition of Facebook. The company's story has been dramatised in the 2010 movie "The Social Network". Starting as an exclusive Harvard-only network, in 2006 it opened to the public and at the time of writing, they have just announced that Facebook has over 750 million users. The "wall" is Facebook's central feature, were one can keep up with their friend's activities. Facebook also started connecting technologies when it introduced instant messaging, apps and recently video calling for it's users.

Other social networks of mention are Flickr, which is popular with the photography scene. It focuses on the user's photos and one can add them to "pools" were the users of that "pool" can view them. There are other networks like Orkut, which is very popular only in certain countries and niche networks, mostly focusing on bookmarking like Delicious and Reddit. Other types of networks, or rather communities are the MMORPG communities like World of Worcraft, which is centred on their forums and in-game communications. There are also communities which focus on video content, ranging from YouTube, which allows you to post videos, to live streaming sites such as UStream.tv.

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Today

Looking into the future, from 2007, Twitter has grown considerably. While not a social network in it's own right, but more of a short updates to your followers network, it has gained momentum. The recently launched (still in beta invite-only at the time of writing) Google+ service is also interesting. What Google have done is take the best of the other networks and add a flavour of their own. So they added a "wall" - like feature similar to Facebook's but also introduced the new concept of "circles". "Circles" allows you to group your acquantancies into categories, for example "Family" and "Photography". This will allow you to group or rather, categorise the information coming to your wall and it also therefore allows you to share particular materials with only a "circle" of friends.

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Conclusion

Personally, right now, I make use of Facebook to keep up with my real-life friends, Twitter to keep updated with the latest and greatest and also trying out Google+. While Google+ is still pretty much full of tech-savvy people, I would like to see it grow but at the same time understand the simple question most people pose: "Why should I leave from the comfort of Facebook?". They can co-exist side-by-side, but this still remains to be seen.