Who invented the first social network?

Answer 1

Early social networking websites started in the form of generalized online communities such as The WELL (1985), Theglobe.com (1994), Geocities (1994) and Tripod.com (1995). These early communities focused on bringing people together to interact with each other through chat rooms, and share personal information and ideas around any topics via personal homepage publishing tools which was a precursor to the blogging phenomenon. Some communities took a different approach by simply having people link to each other via email addresses. These sites included Classmates.com (1995), focusing on ties with former school mates, and SixDegrees.com (1997), focusing on indirect ties. User profiles could be created, messages sent to users held on a "friends list" and other members could be sought out who had similar interests to yours in their profiles (Boyd & Ellison 2007, p. 3). Similar features had existed in some form before SixDegrees.com came about, but this would be the first time these functions were available in one package. For example, PlanetAll.com also recommended potential friends, but did not make them public or link them in any way, so this was a step forward Despite these new developments (that would later catch on and become immensely popular), the SixDegrees.com simply wasn't profitable and eventually shut down and Amazon.com bought up PlanetAll. It was even described by the website's owner as "simply ahead of its time."New social networking methods were quickly developed by the end of the 1990s, which changed the social networking model from ones that simply recommended additions to users to ones they could manage themselves.These sites included Epinions.com, using a system called 'The Web of Trust', which allowed users to build social networks based on who they trusted.These system began to flourish with the emergence of Friendster in 2002 causing such sites to become part of mainstream users globally. Friendster was followed by MySpace and LinkedIn a year later, and finally, Bebo. By 2005, MySpace, emergent as the biggest of them all, was reportedly getting more page views than Google. 2004 saw the emergence of Facebook, a competitor, also rapidly growing in size. In 2006, Facebook opened up to the non US college community, and together with allowing externally-developed add-on applications, and some applications enabled the graphing of a user's own social network - thus linking social networks and social networking, became the largest and fastest growing site in the world, not limited by particular geographical followings.

Answer 2

SixDegrees.com is cited as the first social networking site as we recognize them today (given a strict definition). It appeared in 1997.

Note that there were other sites before this with specializations, such as dating sites, but did not include all the elements of a modern social networking site, including a public profile, a "friends" list, and the ability to travel across friends' relationships to their friends (etc).

Answer 3

It depends on what your view of a social network is but, Andrew Weinreich founded SixDegrees.com somewhere around 1997...that is really the first 'social networking' site to allow a user to create profile & add friends, etc.

Answer 4

In 1995, Stewart Brand and Larry Brilliant founded a company called WELL, which could be considered as the first social networking site.

Answer 5

I know that the first but not best social network was made by David Bazucki and is named Bazucki and associates but now sold to the cobalt group and www.friendster.com

Answer 6

bazucki and associates was first but was sold friendster because it wasn't so good, the founder was david bazucki, he is now CEO and founder of Roblox.

Answer 7

I would say FaceBook