SixDegrees was the first website to combined features such as creating a profile, inviting and listing friends, as well as surfing other users profiles. These features already existed on other websites at the time, but they were never put together (boyd & Ellison, 2008). Because of that, SixDegrees.com was the first recognizable social network site (SNS), launching in 1997 and closing its service in 2000 (boyd & Ellison, 2008). SixDegrees had 3.5 million users in 1999 before YouthStream bought it and shut it down a year later (Press, 2018). Even though the SNS was not around for a very long time, it had a substatial influential role in what social media has become nowadays.
According to boyd & Ellison, “SixDegrees promoted itself as a tool to help people connect with and send messages to others” (2008), which created the base for every SNS that we know, such as MySpace and Facebook. According to its founder, SixDegrees biggest failure was caused by the fact that it was simply ahead of its time (as cited in boyd & Ellison, 2008). Back then, not many people had access to the internet, and because of that, there was not an extended amount of friends to connect within the SNS (boyd & Elliot, 2008). People also complained that there was nothing much left to do after adding their friends (boyd & Elliot, 2008), and that shows the lack of different features that the SNS presented. Social media such as Myspace and Facebook were extremely influenced by SixDegrees, especially by its failures.
MySpace was launched at the right time to have an impressive beginning. In 2003, the biggest competitor MySpace had was Friendster, a growing social network. Friendster was created by Jonathan Abrams and Peter Chin in March of 2002 and made its Web debut a year later (Rivlin, 2016). The website had 3 million registered users by Fall 2003, and before anyone had heard of MySpace, publications like Vanity Fair and US Weekly were writing about Friendster (Rivlin, 2006). Soon, however, the website started to present technical difficulties (boyd, 2006, as cited in Press, 2018) as well as suffering from poor management decisions. Because of that, the fall of Friendster was widely blamed on its founders (Chafkin, 2007). The issues with the website persuaded the users of Friendster to switch to the next new growing business: MySpace. Combining the failure seen from SixDegrees and Friendster, MySpace created some unique features such as allowing their users to change their backgrounds and build a profile with already made themes, as well as the Music section, which allowed people to have music on their profile. With these features, people would spend more time accessing the SNS and would not be bored. However, the lack of innovations on their features also impacted MySpace when Facebook came.
Tom Standage, an English journalist, wrote that MySpace’s new owner “treated [the network] as a media outlet rather than a technology platform” (as cited in Forbes, Press, 2018), meaning that they were more interested in maximizing the advertising dollars instead of focusing on improving the technology and creating new features. Also, the Appleton website stated that MySpace was being controlled by an empire that had “little-to-no Internet company knowledge” (“Myspace: What happened and where is it now?,” 2013), and that resulted in a flood of ads on the website that hindered the user’s experience. On the other hand, Facebook watched SixDegrees, Friendster, and MySpace mistakes and built a strategy of prioritizing the quality, the features, and market fit instead of the advertisement. It clearly worked since Facebook is currently the largest SNS based on global reach and total active users (Statista, 2019). It has over 2 billion monthly active users and over a billion daily users (Smith, 2019), as shown in the graphic below:
In conclusion, SixDegrees, the pioneer of SNS, was definitely ahead of its time when it comes to technology, since only the minority of people had access to the internet and, also, because the idea of social media was just starting to be introduced. However, the impact SixDegrees had on the creation of networks such as MySpace and Facebook was huge. The culture of adding friends on social media and staying connected to them is an idea that came with SixDegrees and expended to all the social media that we have nowadays. SixDegrees also introduced the business of SNS, and its failures directed MySpace and Facebook to the right direction to last longer in the business. However, MySpace failed in developing its network, and Facebook took over. The strategies used by Facebook to expand its business and innovate their features resulted in it becoming the biggest SNS nowadays worldwide.
References
boyd, d. m., Ellison, N. B. (2008). Social network sites: Definition, history, and scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13, 210-230. doi:10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007.00393.x
Chafkin, M. (2007, June 1). How to kill a great idea!. Inc. Retrieved from: https://www.inc.com/magazine/20070601/features-how-to-kill-a-great-idea.html
Myspace: What happened and where is it now?. (2013). Appleton. Retrieved from: https://www.appletoncreative.com/2013/12/19/myspace-what-happened-and-where-is-it-now/
Number of monthly active Facebook users worldwide as of 4th quarter 2018 (in millions). (2019, January). Statista. Retrieved from: https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly-active-facebook-users-worldwide/
Press, G. (2018, April 8). Why facebook triumphed over all other social networks. Forbes. Retrieved from: https://www.forbes.com/sites/gilpress/2018/04/08/why-facebook-triumphed-over-all-other-social-networks/#1113cbea6e91
Smith, C. (2019, March 1). 845 amazing facebook statistics, history and facts (December 2018). DMR. Retrieved from: https://expandedramblings.com/index.php/by-the-numbers-17-amazing-facebook-stats/
Rivlin, G. (2006, October 15). Wallflower at the web party. New York Times. Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/15/business/yourmoney/15friend.html?_r=1
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