There is an abundance of social networking sites out there. How has Facebook become so popular?
eCrush is a website that makes love matches for
teens. eCrush has been a social network since February 1999.eCrush users first create a list of people that they are interested in
and then crush users can send an anonymous email to an individual they are
interested in, and that person will received a crush notification. The person
that received an anonymous email can then sign up for eCrush and make a list of
people they are interested. If there are two people that are interested in one
another, they will have a match notification. There have been over 1,000,000
matches made by eCrush. eCrush has shut down its original site in 2011 and the
company launched eCrushonline and similar social
networking websites such as eSpin. eCrush peaked around 2000 with over 3,000
new registrations per day. The popularity of this site led to copycats that had
very similar functions of eCrush. To keep competitive with these new copycats,
eCrush offered quizzes, romantic articles to keep the website engaging. eCrush
may not be as hot today as it was back in 2001 because the website was
restrictive. It was made for teens, so everything put onto the website had to
appropriate for teens and required monitoring. Also, for safety reasons
interactions between the users on eCrush were pre-drafted phases. Additionally,
spam was an issue for the company, which could have also led to the decline of
eCrush.
Friendster.com was a
social networking site that allowed users to contact other members, maintain these
contacts, and share information and various media. Also, users were able to
find new events and hobbies. It was founded in 2002 before Myspace (2003) and
Facebook (2004). It reached tens of thousands of users at its peak in
2003-2004. It closed in May 2011 and became a social entertainment site
featuring games. Interesting enough in 2001, the users increased by 50% and
more than 90% were from Asia.
Andrew Weinreich founded
SixDegrees.com. He wanted to make a social network for users to meet people
they didn’t know through the users the individual already knew. SixDegrees.com
was a social network site that was named after "The Six Degrees of Separation" concept. The users were able to list family, friends, and acquaintances on the site.
The users could also send messages or post information on bulletin boards to
people in their first, second, and third degrees and discover new connections
to any other users on the website. It peaked in 2000, where there were a total
of 1,000,000 members on SixDegrees.com.
Myspace is another social
networking site launched in 2003. This particular social network has a strong
music emphasis. Users can post in bulletins, add groups of users with similar
interests, and chat with other users on the Myspace instant messenger. There
were other features such as featuring your mood, video sharing, and a newsfeed
was created in 2007. On Myspace users could also interact with friends by add
comments to posts on your profile. Myspace started off only having users that
were employees in a company called eUniverse. eUniverse was a large company
with 20 million users. Eventually the site was open to the public. This site
peaked in from 2005 to 2008. But in 2008, Facebook became a more popular social
network.
Mark Zuckerberg with his
roommates at Harvard University created the social networking service, Facebook
in 2004. This site was exclusively for Harvard students and then was extended
to college students in the Boston area, the Ivy schools, and Stanford
University. Eventually Facebook allowed all college students and then highs
school students. Now membership is open to anyone over than the age of 13 years
old.
eCrush could never gain
the same popularity that Facebook because there are too many sites out there
that are too similar. Also, Facebook is allowed for anyone over 13 years old,
which is a larger age range than the eCrush users who are teens. Friendster focused on the media and lacked the social aspect that many members wanted. SixDegrees.com failed because they ran of out money and did not have enough users to support the website. Myspace probably failed because of Facebook. Facebook had better features, in particular the newsfeed, which keeps you connected to your friends. Overall, Facebook will remain popular due to the amount of users that actively use the website.
I found this blog post to be enlightening and interesting. It appealed to what most blog readers would be interested it since those who reading this blog are most likely to have lived through and are familiar with these social networking websites. Its always a wonder of every Facebook use why this particular website is so extremely dominant and why are we not familiar with other social networking sites. Why does it seem that there is only one networking website when there are billions of people using the Internet. This blog brings the reader through each social networking website which has had its time of dominance over the Internet, which nicely educates the reader on a brief social networking history. Starting with eCrush, the earliest, the reader learns that Facebook was in fact not the first website to connect people over the Internet. I found it helpful to know when the website peaked (in 2000) and why it is no longer dominant: failure due to spam and the website was too generic. Next the author taught us about Friendster and SixDegrees.com, which both had millions of users when popular. These websites failed to succeed due to their lack of social aspects and a shortage of funds. Myspace, similar to Facebook was greatly known and used through out the world. Founded one year before Facebook, in 2003 it continuously grew into a superpower but eventually fell behind Facebook in 2008 because it was not as popular and did not have as many features. Finally the author gives us a brief description on Facebook and how it grew from colleges to high schools to being a worldwide social networking tool. I enjoyed the brief description of each website and how it rose and fell. Facebook was proven to supersede each website in every example given. The only part of this blog I felt was lacking was the details of why Facebook really is the most dominant social network. While the author does speak about all the features of the fallen social networks, it leaves out vital information about how Facebook keeps all of its users and why it is the best. Facebook is the best because it is universal; it connects people from all over the world. The website allows old friends, celebrities, and companies to communicate and keep in touch easily through wall posts, private messaging, private events, and status updates. Facebook is free and safe to use: with many personalized security setting for each user’s account. Facebook is difficult to hack into and you rarely ever see spam on the website. The author did a great job of attracting readers with the quick, simple, and easily readable title but I felt like details about the main subject spoken about (Facebook) were left out.
ReplyDeleteThis blog post was very interesting, since many of the social networking sites mentioned were before our age group became active on social networking. Based on the description of eCrush, I can see why it would have failed to Facebook. Many parents do not like their teens participating on social networking sites because of safety issues, and eCrush seems much more risky. Other sites such as eHarmony are successful because they cater to an adult crowd and dodge many legal issues. It was great that you described each networking site and provided their peak time. With the information you provided, it was easy to see how social networking has been refined over the past decade. It seems that Facebook has been so successful because as you mentioned, it caters to a very large population with little age restriction. I think it would have been interesting to hear a bit more about the features that Facebook has that contributes to it's global popularity. It also could have been interesting to provide some information about how Facebook is perceived as safer than many of the previously mentioned networking sites, such as eCrush.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading this post and the author's descriptions of up-and-coming social networks and her predictions of why they failed.
ReplyDeleteI think she had a couple good explanations at the end, but given the title, I would have liked to see more analysis and less summary of social network sites.
One of her assumptions for Facebook's success is because of the news feed feature's advantage over other networking sites' classic design, but the news feed didn't appear until 2006.
I don't think it was any particular technical advantage Facebook had over its competitors that made it successful, but I think it was an entirely sociocultural phenomenon that made it take off so well. In the early 2000s, many adults were not equipped or ready to handle technology well. Because Facebook began with college students, who were young enough to adapt but old enough to learn quickly, the phenomenon spread to other universities where students wanted to keep in touch with their friends. Then these students graduated college and continued using Facebook while other new college students were logging on and spreading the word to their contacts. Eventually the site grew to the size it is today.
But I don't think Facebook's success can be attributed to minor features like the news feed or additional security, because small features like those are not enough to push a mass exodus off MySpace to Facebook.
The latter's success is due fully to marketing the website to its initial consumers.