1. GENERATION FACEBOOK?
THE HISTORY OF SOCIAL NETWORKS
A presentation by Knut Linke, University of Latvia, at the
International Conference:
GLOBAL BUSINESS MANAGEMENT RESEARCH CONFERENCE
02.-04 DECEMBER, 2011
FULDA, GERMANY
2. Overview
Computer Medieated Interaction
Invention of the „Internet“
The first social networks
The Facebook
Local and niche Markets
Current leaders
Conclusion
3. The startof Computer Mediated
Interaction
• The first email were transferred in the year
1971 (Tomlinson, 2011).
• On 16/02/1978 the first bulletin board was
converted onto an electronic base
(Gilbertson, 2010), the bulletin board service
(BBS)
• With its technology the BBS set the
ideological and technical basement for the in
1979 introduced Usenet (Hauben, 1990).
4. The invention of the „Internet“
• Invention of the World Wide Web by Tim-
Berners Lee on August 6th, 1991 (Berners-Lee,
1991).
• Introduction of webserver and browser for the
displaying of information and the receiving of
information through the usage from hyperlinks.
• During 1994 and 1995 the first private Internet
providers were established for the consumer market
and set the basics for the usage of the Internet
technology in our times (Borders, 2009).
5. Virtual Cities
• One of those little and local providers, the “Beverly
Hills Internet” company, introduced the GeoCities
network in 1995.
• GeoCities allowed the introduction of personal information
through a webpage related to virtual cities (Altman,
Bohnet, 1995).
• Customer were able to create standard webpages and to
integrate them into webrings which belonged to content
areas or city areas.
6. SixDegrees.com – The First Social
Network
• The success from GeoCities was followed by
sixdegress.com in 1997 which was already similar to
current social networks like Facebook
• SixDegress.com featured a virtual self-identity and
presentation page as also the mentioned friend list
feature and determined with this the basic standards
for social network sites (Boyd, Ellison, 2007).
• “Sixdegress.com had at its peak 1,000,000 users and
around 100 employees, but was shut down in 2001”
7. Social Sharing & Networks
• After SixDegress.com several other social networks like
classmates.com were introduced to the Internet. Also the
first social per to per network was introduced to the
Internet users:
• The Napster system allowed as first service the direct sharing
of personal files through an online network.
• During his success, Napster gets his peak to the end of 2001
with around 26.4 million customers using the exchange of
content via the Napster network (Lipsman, 2011).
• Additional social networks started like Friendster
(becomes a leader in Asia) in 2002 and MySpace and
Second Live in 2003.
8. TheFacebook.com / fb.com
• Facebook was founded under the alias “The Facebook” in
February 2004 (Facebook 2, 2011) and until September
2006 the system was only available to students in the
states with a valid .edu e-mail address and at the
beginning only for students from Harvard.
• The network had over 750 million active users in the mid of July
2011 (Alexa 2, 2011) and those spend over 700 billion minutes
per month on Facebook (Facebook 1, 2011).
• In Germany over 20 million people are active in the Facebook
network. From the members base, more males are active in the
network as females (in the US it is the opposite). The main area
in age is between 13 – 44 years, which represent 17.2 million
users (Allfacebook, 2011)
9. TheFacebook.com / fb.com
• Facebook Feature Race:
• November 2007 - Facebook Pages / May 2008 - Facebook
Connect / February 2009 - “Like it” Button / July 2009 -
Facebook credits / August 2010 - Facebook / March 2011 -
Facebook Questions / July 2011 - Facebook credits become
the standard payment method in Facebook (Facebookbiz,
2011)
• The usage of personal user data allows marketers to
set up marketing campaigns, based on personal
preferences and includes friends of a user on those
campaigns.
10. Niche markets and local leaders
• Niche market: Business networks
• Market leader in Germany and central Europe: Xing
• Available in 16 languages; provides the ability to
exchange knowledge in over 45.000 groups and supports
the community by providing the functions to organize
offline events for and from the community.
• As company Xing employs in June 2011 over 380 co-
workers.
• Over 10.8 million users in 2011, 759 thousand premium
customers and over 476 million page impressions (Xing,
2011)
11. Niche markets and local leaders
Focus on German users: The VZ-Network
• Established in October 2005 as a service similar to the first version
of Facebook .
• After the success of a student network additional networks were
was launched for non-students and for pupils and persons below
eighteen.
• The network offers for all three brands the same technology.
• 17 million users in July 2011 (StudiVZ 1, 2011), active amount of
11.6 million unique users, (StudiVZ 2, 2011VZ)
• In the first quarter from 2011 only 10.8 million users were active in
the network, which is around 60% from the available user base
(StudiVZ 3, 2011).
12. Microblogging via Twitter
• Twitter was introduced in 2006 under the name Twttr as
micro blogging service (Patel, 2011).
• The approach is to provide short status updates
(limitation on 140 characters ) to friends and interested
people on a personal page.
• The system had at the beginning of 2011 around 200
million users (Shiels, 2011).
• An active user is understood as a user how as send out for
messages during the time period of a month (Pfeiffer, 2011).
• The amount of tweets in the German language in March
2011 was around 16.7 million from around 480.000 active
users with the setting of German as their language.
13. The + in Google
• Google’s social network was introduced in June
2011m reached during the beta period a 20 million
users by the end of June (Musil, 2011) and launched
official in August 2011.
• Special feature: the circle approach.
• Instead of Facebook the Google+ system allows the adding
of friends only into separated lists, called circles.
14. The + in Google
• In addition to the “Like it” function from Facebook,
Google introduced the +1 function.
• In Google+ the +1 function works like the Facebook function and
aggregated recognition for the provided content.
• On external webpages the +1 function adds the selected
webpage or content on a personal bookmark page.
• The search results from Google works with those +1 in
addition to allow a social search approach. Personal
highlight from friends or +1 from your circles are
displayed in an aggregated way in the search results.
15. Conclusion - 1
• This sector in business has changed rapidly from a niche
market in the Internet business into a market with high
competition.
• With the provided information it can be displayed that
social interaction via the Internet is not a development
from our current time and that social networks and
exchange had its success in the past.
• The main difference, beside the ongoing increasment of
technological features and the more perfect integration
of the interpersonal communication, which is also the
fast driver for technological improvements in the system,
is the reached in the society as itself.
16. Conclusion - 2
• The market leader Facebook seems also to be aware of
the changing situation, by introducing new features since
the beginning of August 2011 by including the abilities
from Google+ in a lower level as a circle approach and
focusing on the fast speed communication from Twitter.
• The international market for social networks will be still
heavily active during the next months and years and it
can be possible that the market leader Facebook will be
replaced or loss traffic to new competitors soon.
17. References-1
• Alexa 2 (2011): Alexa - The Web Information Company: Top 500 Global Sites, In: http://www.alexa.com/topsites.
• Allfacebook (2011): Facebook Nutzerdaten Deutschland, In: http://allfacebook.de/userdata/.
• Altman D.; Bohnet D. (1995): Beverly Hills Internet, builder of interactive cyber cities, launches 4 more virtual communities
linked to real places; SiliconValley, CapitolHill, Paris and Tokyo offer free homesteads to residents of BHI's 'GeoCities' In:
Business Wire, 07/05/1995.
• Berners-Lee T. (1991): WorldWideWeb: Summary, In:
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.hypertext/msg/395f282a67a1916c?pli=1.
• Borders B. (2009): A Brief History of Social Media, In: http://copybrighter.com/history-of-social-media.
• Boyd D. M., Ellison N. B. (2007): Social network sites: Definition, history, and scholarship. In: Journal of Computer-Mediated
Communication, 13(1), article 11.
• Facebook 1 (2011): Facebook Statistics, In: http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics.
• Facebook 2 (2011): Facebook Factsheet, In: http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?factsheet.
• Facebookbiz (2011): Die Geschichte des Facebook Commerce, In: http://www.facebookbiz.de/artikel/die-geschichte-des-
facebook-commerce-infografik.
• Gilbertson S. (2010): Feb. 16, 1978: Bulletin Board Goes Electronic, In:
http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2010/02/0216cbbs-first-bbs-bulletin-board.
• Hauben R. (1995): ON THE EARLY DAYS OF USENET: THE ROOTS OF THE COOPERATIVE ONLINE CULTURE. In: Netizens: An
Anthology, chapter 10, Columbia University.
18. References-2
• Lipsman A. (2001): GLOBAL NAPSTER USAGE PLUMMETS, BUT NEW FILE-SHARING ALTERNATIVES GAINING GROUND, REPORTS
JUPITER MEDIA METRIX, In: Comscore.com.
• Musil S. (2011): Google+ hits 20 million marks in three weeks, In: News.cnet.com.
• Patel R. (2006): Odeo Releases Twttr, 07/15/2006, In: Techcrunch.com.
• Pfeiffer T. (2011): 480.000 Twitternutzende im März 2011, In: webevangelisten.de.
• Shiels M. (2011): Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey rejoins company, In: bbc.co.uk/news/.
• StudiVZ 1 (2011): Über uns - Daten und Fakten, In: http://www.studivz.net/l/about_us/1/.
• StudiVZ 2 (2011): VZgeschäftlich - Aktuelles aus den VZ-Netzwerken, In: http://www.studivz.net/geschaeftlich.
• StudiVZ3 (2011): Mediadaten VZ Netzwerke, Juni 2011, In: Mediadaten VZ Netzwerke, VZ Netzwerk, Berlin.
• Tomlinson R. (2011): The First Network Email, In: http://openmap.bbn.com/~tomlinso/ray/firstemailframe.html.
• Xing (2011): Facts & Figures, In: http://corporate.xing.com/deutsch/investor-relations/basisinformationen/zahlen-und-fakten/.
