Evolution of Social Networking

Social networking is a crazy thing, so many sources and different ways to communicate and connect. Over the internet’s lifespan everyone seems to migrate from one to the other, it might not happen as a rush but slowly everyone will migrate from one to the other.

Starting back a long time ago, the best thing going was LiveJournal where everyone spilled their life and personal comments towards each other. I remember following many friends while on the service, but like everything on the internet it slowly died and we migrated to a bigger and better service.

Friendster hit the internet pipeline and everyone went nuts. LiveJournal quickly became obsolete and the hip thing became Friendster which let people have custom profiles. It was more of a social network than LiveJournal and was a bit more intimate about having a personal profile on the internet. Friendster had a great spree, but came up short when MySpace was launched.

MySpace literally exploded with new users and animated GIFs. MySpace quickly became an internet phenomenon and anyone who was anyone had to be on the network. MySpace was right at the turning point of social networking and allowed people to “friend” others and chat with them within the service. MySpace also became a totally customizable profile, allowing people to upload music and create a personal profile all their own. If you can remember back then, everyone had to have an animated GIF on their profile and it was so annoying when they placed it as a tiled background.

MySpace was fun while it lasted, it turned many people off to the service when customized profiles made users computers crash. MySpace, like Friendster, had a good run until Orkut came along. Although it didn’t get as big as MySpace it certainly saw more traffic and usage then the other services. Orkut offered a great user experience that didn’t hinder your computer. It was a great service while it lasted until Google bought it up and then just left it to die.

This gave room for Facebook to squeeze in closely after Orkut and become an internet sensation. It started out for only college networks to use and connect but Mark Zuckerberg slowly brought it up to use world-wide and quickly grow to its massive user base today. They are by far the largest social network on the planet and are continually growing at an amazing rate day by day. They’ve been at it since 2005 and are growing strong.

Along with Facebook, Twitter came to market but is playing a different ball game over Facebook. Twitter’s main goal is to provide instant updates and information in 140 characters or less. It’s a great social tool but it does present some problems, only being able to type 140 characters is one of its biggest weakness. Beside that, the company continues to do well and grow and an accelerated rate. They have their one niche and would be fools to change.

Lastly we have a hybrid, like Facebook and Twitter, Google+ came on the market to become a competitor of both Facebook and Twitter. Granted, Google+ isn’t at all similar to Facebook or Twitter in look or feel but its main goal is to proved instant updates of any length to share to the public. After having been on Google+ for a while it feels great to work with and navigate. It’s still a little buggy, and is still in beta form but it’s pretty good.

All these services are in the continuing evolution of the internet and Google+ is next, what’s beyond that is anyones best bet.

For now, if you want to add me on Google+ follow this link: http://gplus.to/craighton