NEW YORK (AP) - Facebook may have made social networking a worldwide cultural phenomenon, but it wasn’t the first Internet company to connect people online. And it won’t be the last. Here’s a look at how social networking has evolved. Some companies have come and gone. Some are mere shells of their former selves. And others show promise, even as Facebook dominates the social Web.
_ Geocities
Launched in 1994, Geocities offered a way for people to build websites and tell the world about themselves with postings and photos. Users could also buy and sell things through online stores. Pages built to feature different subjects formed virtual communities. Yahoo bought it in 1999, at the height of the dot-com boom, for about $3 billion and shut it down a decade later. Geocities was among the early services that let people form online communities. Yahoo shut down GeoCities in 2009.
The website created to connect former schoolmates with one another launched in 1995, possibly before its time. It filed to go public in 2007 when it had about 50 million users, but withdrew the IPO that December, citing “market conditions.” Classmates.com still exists today, but is overshadowed by Facebook. It’s owned by United Online Inc., which is also home to online florists such as FTD and Interflora.
_ SixDegrees
Started by Andrew Weinreich in 1997, SixDegrees was “the first online business that attempted to identify and map a set of real relationships between real people using their real names,” writes author David Kirkpatrick in “The Facebook Effect.” Though it attracted millions of users, the site failed to catch on and shut down in 2000. Weinreich later told Kirkpatrick that “We were early. Timing is everything.”
Launched in 1999, LiveJournal offered _ and still offers _ a rudimentary form of social networking. Users write online journals and share them with friends or the general public. The site doesn’t require people to use their real names, and with short status update snippets more popular today, seems more akin to blogging than to social networking. It’s owned by Moscow-based SUP Media and remains popular in Russia.
_ Friendster
Launched by Jonathan Abrams in 2002, Friendster was many people’s first introduction to a social network. It showed a lot of promise, and by the fall of 2003 had nearly 2 million users and deep-pocketed investors such as Peter Thiel, who later became one of the first people to invest in Facebook. “By enabling people to connect seamlessly in a global network of social relationships, Friendster stands at the very core of what the Internet is all about,” Thiel told The Associated Press in 2003. The site faded as MySpace and then Facebook rose. Malaysian tycoon Vincent Tan bought the site in 2009 for an undisclosed sum. Today, Friendster operates as an online gaming platform.
_ Tribe.net
Founded in 2003 by Mark Pincus, now the CEO of online game company Zynga Inc., and two other entrepreneurs, Tribe was created to let people form online communities around shared interests. Today, it’s used largely by aficionados of alternative lifestyles, with groups ranging from a vegetarian and vegan recipe exchange to “beauty secrets for divas.”
_ MySpace
Launched in 2003 by entrepreneurs Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson, who was every MySpace user’s first friend. It became a popular Internet destination and an important way for little-known musicians to market themselves and interact with their fans. News Corp. bought it for $580 million in 2005 when it was still a fast-rising Internet darling. But MySpace lost its footing over the years, as the fun of customizing one’s profile began to bore its users and the site’s heavy use of banner advertisements slowed the speed at which pages loaded. It peaked in 2008 with some 76 million U.S. visitors, but people were already migrating to Facebook. News Corp. sold the site to online ad network operator Specific Media last year for $35 million.
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