The Rise and Fall of Social Networks

Most of us have seen the transition in social networking, from Friendster to Myspace, Myspace to Facebook. Each having their primes and falls. In January 2, 2011 Facebook recieved $500 million through investments from Goldman Sachs and Digital Sky Technologies; a Russian investment firm that has already invested about $500 million in Facebook, placing the popular social sites' valuation at $50 billion. This deal would undoubtedly ensure CEO Mark Zuckerberg's place in the market as interest grows in social media sites. But how long until the next big social network takes over?

Friendster's creation in 2002 by Jonathan Abrams, Peter Chin, and Dave Lee, put social sites under the spotlight. People just found something so appealing about the idea of connecting with people without having to leave your house. The site allowed you to create a profile and "friend" anyone of your choosing, you could then share media and messages with your friends. With 115 million registered users and over 61 million unique visitors a month globally, it's held it's ground up until now.

However social sites didn't really boom until the release of Myspace in 2003. Myspace became the most popular social networking site in the United States in June 2006. Tom Anderson applied the same idea as Friendster, only adding the feature to edit the html coding of your homepage. This gave users the ultimate customization tool, but also created a rift between users. Some found that idea too complicated, "we just want a simple social site...".

So to the rescue comes Mark Zuckerberg, with the release of Facebook in 2004, the gloves were off. The simple social site allowed users to share media, messages, and made social networking easier between people. Becoming a household name in 2008, it overtook Myspace with over 500 million users to date. Myspace now employs over 1,000 employees after laying off 30% of its work force.

This is all similar to how a child begins ignoring his old toy when given a new one. It's only a matter of time before we find another toy to play with. After the recent deal we can all guess that Facebook has a long way to go before it sees that graveyard. But let's see how long it takes before people give Facebook the cold shoulder.