Thursday, 10 December 2009

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  The Complete History of Social Networking Websites

  Socially, there are essentially two groups of people in America, with each group having its own distinct members and characteristics.  For now, we’ll call these groups Group A and Group B. 

  In the beginning (2003), there was Friendster.com.  Yuppies, educated people, Asians, and other socially conscious and internet-adept folks (all members of Group A) joined this website.  This group immediately saw the potential with Friendster as a place to reunite with old friends and find people with similar interests.  These people from Group A instantly found themselves reconnecting with people they hadn’t seen since elementary school and people from their old church they hoped to never see again.  The internet being used for this purpose was never seen on such a large scale before (the site’s massive popularity occasionally destroyed its servers).

  Meanwhile, children, porn stars, artists, and other derelicts (all members of Group B) wanted to get in on the social networking craze, but didn’t join Friendster.  They joined MySpace.com, mostly because they were guaranteed of having at least one friend (MySpace founder Tom) upon signing up.  MySpace was kind of like Friendster, except without any rules.  People were allowed to customize their page with layouts, music, and endless amounts of naked pictures.  For these reasons, MySpace was inundated with people from Group B in the summer of 2004, dwarfing Friendster’s membership.  Not to be left out, Group A members of Friendster joined MySpace as well, but were outnumbered by the deluge of people from Group B.  Because of the Group B invasion, MySpace became a cesspool of overexposed pictures, broken English, music, and venereal diseases.

  MySpace dominated for years, but lurking in the background was a group of young Group A people (college students) on an upstart social networking site called Facebook.com.  People from Friendster, Group A people on MySpace, and Group A people who were new to the social networking phenomenon flocked to Facebook, which was seen as a place that restored order and respectability to social networking.  Facebook took a while to catch on, but eventually 99% of all Group A people in the United States joined the site by 2009.

  Meanwhile, Group B MySpacers, confused by Facebook’s applications and turned off by its privacy controls, refused to join Facebook.  They stayed with MySpace but still wanted their imbecilic thoughts to seem relevant, so they joined Twitter.com.  Twitter also attracted Group B vagrants (mostly celebrities who didn’t finish high school) who couldn’t comprehend MySpace, and Twitter continues the grand tradition of mindless internet that began with MySpace.  By 2009, 99% of Group B people nationwide were on Twitter.

  And THAT is the complete history of social networking sites.

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