Social Network Websites

Development

In the 1990s, when consumer World Wide Web technologies were still being developed, analysts spoke of the web's potential as a social connector, creating communities and bringing people together in ways never before thought possible. These idealistic conversations made their trial run with http://Classmates.com, established in 1995 to reunite long-lost high school friends online. After that, a handful of networking sites spun off the Classmates. com concept, but none took off in the ways that craigslist (launched in 1995), Friendster (2002), and http://Meetup.com (2004) did in later years. Among these sites, craigslist has grown substantially, serving primarily as an online marketplace based in major cities around the United States and the world. While it fits the networking website definition broadly with its role as social connector, it does not allow its users to create individual profiles.

Facebook was launched in 2004, initially as a space for current college friends and classmates to interact, though it has since broadened to appeal to other groups. Until 2007, the site was considered to be more “closed” than its major competitor, MySpace, which does not require a user to give accurate personal information in order to build a profile. Facebook has grown tremendously, but still plays second fiddle to MySpace, which (as this is written) by far dominates the online social networking arena.

In July 2005, when MySpace was receiving more web hits than Google, Rupert Murdoch (1931–), owner of News Corporation, purchased it for $580 million. The acquisition acknowledged young people's movement away from traditional media, as time spent online was replacing that in front of television receivers. Murdoch's strategy was to expand MySpace into overseas markets, and in November 2006, he announced a Japanese joint venture expansion. Although the site has a level of mass appeal, it has also cultivated a niche as the home of many popular music artists, who have created their own profiles on MySpace as a way of reaching tens of millions of consumers. Emerging from the Los Angeles music scene in 2003, MySpace rapidly became popular with teenagers and young adults. Users often combine streaming video and sound clips to their profiles, along with more conventional text and images. Members communicate with each other by sending messages that are posted on publicly visible bulletin boards, and profiles often list musical tastes, personal heroes, and basic personal information such as date of birth, marital status, or career.

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