Social Networking Services

History:

SixDegrees.com: The first social networking site was SixDegrees.com, founded in 1997. This site attempted to connect with and send messages to others. SixDegrees.com failed because there were not enough "friends" online yet and there was not enough of a social aspect to this networking site.

Ryze.com: Launched in 2001, Ryze.com was meant to helped people with business networks much like LinkedIn does today. Its audience was largely entrepreneurs and aimed to connect them with potential investors. Failed because it never gained enough members to promote interaction but it is still an active website.

Friendster.com: A social complement to Ryze, Friendster was designed to compete with Match.com. It was designed to help friends-of-friends meet and interact. Its initial popularity was with three groups: bloggers, gay men and attendees of the Burning Man arts festival. Failed because of its exponential growth. Friendster had several servers fail consistently and could not keep up with the technology needed to maintain an active website.

Myspace.com: Originally designed to attract estranged Friendster users, Myspace gained popularity through indie-rock bands who promoted their music through the website. Myspace allows users to personalize their pages by utilizing HTML code and adding songs from bands Myspace pages. Myspace was purchased by NewsCorp in 2005 for $580 million and has been plagued by safety issues like cyberbulling, pedophiles and misrepresentation of users. Its downfall by its emphasis on entertainment and music rather than social networking and by its site design and excessive advertising. It is still an active website today, but has veered to music discovery unit