The history of social networks and their classification
The combination of words “social network” was born in 1954 and had nothing in common with the Internet.
The person who invented the term was James Barnes: “social network” is a social structure, which includes individuals or groups linked with the same type of activity, common interests, friendship or relationships. So it is a kind of structure of familiar people, divided into different groups, where each person makes a group of classmates, colleagues or friends around him.
Year after year this scientific concept progressed and gained much popularity. The first growth was seen in North America and Eastern Europe. During the process of development of society, we reached the information and communication age, where social media got a lot of popularity.
The first computerized social network appeared in 1971 and was used by the military in the ARPA Net network.
1988 was a year of IRC (Internet Relay Chat), which provided the opportunity to talk online.
The main event was an appearance on the Internet, which Tim Berners-Lee made public in 1991.
There was a network called slassmates.com launched in 1995. It was very popular and became a year of the beginning of the development process of social networks on the Internet. But still classmates.com is
one of the most popular social networks with almost 50 million users.
In 2004, facebook.com appeared and quickly became very popular all over the world. The concept of this network was a bit different but it revolutionized the world of social networks. It has more than 700 million users now.
In 2008, the discount service called Groupon appeared, which is not a real social network, but uses principles similar to those of social networks and invites people to become part of the Groupon community.
Classification
Now there are many different types of social networks, so let’s take a look at some of them.
By type:
- Clasmates.com (personal communication)
- LinkedIn (business communication)
- Youtube video)
- Last.fm (audio)
- Flickr (images)
- Groupon (shopping)
- Reddit (news)
- Forsquare (geolocation)
- Tumblr (blogging)
- Answers.com (answers and questions)
- Delicious (bookmarks)
- Second Life (virtual worlds)
- Slashdot (themed)
By availability:
- Facebook (open)
- PlayboyU (private)
- VK (mixed)
By region:
- Hi5 (Worldwide)
- Qzone (country)
- InterNations (worldwide)
The first classification is the most interesting and has a lot of different content for different groups of people and different goals. So, each person has the opportunity to find a niche and find almost all existing topics. The most popular networks continue to grow.
The second sort type shows availability. There are three different types of current classification: open, private and mixed. Every network was created for a purpose and some of the networks were not made public. And just because of their business model, these networks are closed. But most networks are still public and can be used by anyone from any social group. That is not to the liking of many people due to its advertising of information. Mixed-type social networks are generally not as popular as public networks, because users simply do not like to cross barriers and prefer to refrain from such networks.
And the last type shows us the largest networks in the world that made a kind of union between people from different countries regardless of their culture and skin color. His clones later appeared in different countries and regions. And now we can see many different types of networks that are tied to a city, a region, or even a corporation and political organization. That means no matter who you are and where you are, you can always become a part of any kind of virtual community.