The oldest social network. History - social networks
With the advent of the Internet, many aspects of our lives gradually migrated to the virtual world. And communication was no exception, quite the contrary. The human need for high-speed communication (information transfer) became the basis for the emergence of the Internet itself. While the older generation still remembers well about live forms of communication, the younger generation increasingly prefers virtual connections. Sometimes it comes to the point that even neighbors communicate with each other via the Internet.
The emergence of social networks was a consequence of the development and spread of the Internet. Today, for many people, their morning begins not only with a cup of coffee, but also with viewing their page on one or another social network. According to statistics, about 50% of the population of our planet regularly visit their page on some social network, and some even visit several at once. Their popularity is best demonstrated by data on young people: 96% of young people communicate on social media. networks. And they really are addictive, it’s not for nothing that they’re nicknamed the Internet world wide web. After all, if any insect gets caught in a spider’s web, it remains there forever.
In principle, we can say that the birth of social networks began almost simultaneously with the advent of the Internet back in 1969. Throughout the evolution of social networks, two main directions of development can be distinguished: purely professional communities and non-specialized networks. Derived from professional communities are networks that unite people with the same interests or hobbies.
So, when did the first social network appear and what was it? – different sources put forward different opinions regarding the emergence of the first full-fledged social network. In principle, Classmates.com, created by Randy Conrads in 1995, can be considered the first social networking resource. Classmates translates as classmates. The site provided users with the opportunity to reconnect with former classmates, classmates, colleagues, and friends. Today this network has more than 50 million users in the USA and Canada. In addition, its services are available to residents of Sweden, Germany, Austria and France. But enough for a long time this social portal did not support the functions of creating personal profiles and adding friends. That is, the user could only be connected to his educational institution and provided with a list of students studying at this institution.
That is why some researchers consider the first full-fledged social network not Classmates, but the SixDegrees.com project, which was launched in 1997. At that time, many web services (dating sites, for example) offered functions such as creating a personal page or a list of friends (ICQ and AIM), but separately. SixDegrees.com was the first social networking service to combine these functions, and over time (in 1998) added new ones, such as searching through friends' pages. This project was the closest to modern social networks. networks, however, in 2001, the SixDegrees.com portal ceased to exist. Network founder Andrew Weinreich explained this by saying that the service was simply ahead of its time. In 2000, less than half of US residents had access to the Internet. In other words, registered users did not have enough friends and acquaintances with Internet access to make communication on this site at least interesting.
Social media– leaders in traffic among other Internet resources. Millions of users visit pages every day to chat, find out the latest news, share information and photos. And if you follow the link, you can explore the features of the mobile version of the Odnoklassniki resource.
Of course, certain types of services existed even before the development of the Internet era - most often they were intended for communication in a very narrow circle (certain structures). Our article will focus on publicly available services used by people around the world.
Classmates
The very first social network in the world is the American Odnoklassniki, which appeared in 1995. At first, the resource allowed you to create a profile and a list of friends who could be found solely based on the parameters of a school, service or university. Subsequently, the resource was redesigned - it became possible to create accounts, write messages and much more, as a result of which a social network arose in the usual sense of the word. Now you know when the first social network currently operating appeared.
And if you need the Russian version and want to download Odnoklassniki to your computer, use this link.
Probably everyone is familiar with the theory of six handshakes, according to which all people in the world know each other through six other people? The world's first social network was called Sixdegrees.com, and its work was based on this very principle. The resource began operating in 1997 and was a familiar modern network for communication. Who created the first social network in the familiar sense? This is programmer Andrew Weinreich.
The site has not survived to this day; its functionality was too complex for the 1990s, when the Internet was not yet so widespread and people spent a small amount of time online. Despite attempts to update, the flow of users was too low and the service closed, significantly ahead of its time in terms of development. The resource was replaced by other, more modern ones that are functioning now.
Mark Zuckerberg
This name is familiar to every modern schoolchild and adult. It was he (in collaboration with three other students) who created the well-known Facebook. This happened in 2004, at first the site was available only to students at Harvard University, then it spread among students in Boston, and then conquered the United States, and then the whole world. Just think about it, four students were able to create a unique product that had no similarities in the whole world. Today it is the most popular social network around the globe.
This was an undoubted breakthrough - nothing like it had existed yet. On the site you can create profiles, write messages, share videos and photos, and join various groups. Business accounts created specifically for companies are extremely popular.
Russian equivalent
The very first social network in Russia appeared in 2006, it was then that the well-known Pavel Durov launched his VKontakte project. At its core, it is a repetition of Zuckerberg’s resource, but also has distinctive features.
This site is, without a doubt, familiar to almost every Russian-speaking Internet user. It has gained enormous popularity thanks to its wide entertainment and multimedia capabilities, as well as additional functions(money transfer, video calls, etc.). Users can create their profiles, write messages, share news and read public pages and groups.
Finally, it is worth mentioning the domestic analogue of the first Internet project for communication - Odnoklassniki. The resource was created in 2006 and is only slightly inferior to VKontakte in terms of traffic and popularity. This is an entertainment resource that allows you to find friends, colleagues and fellow students and stay in touch with them. It is worth noting that this service intended for an older age category than Vkontakte (average age of the audience is 16-35 years).
We briefly told you what the first social network was like, analyzed the history of social networks and gave vivid examples of the largest communication sites, some of which are still operating today. Choose an option from existing services, register and start communicating.
When did social networks likeFacebook, VKontakte andTwitter, our world is divided into online and offline. With their help, we can communicate with each other, even being on different continents, listen to music, read books, look at photographs and much more. Social networks have greatly simplified our lives and tied us tightly to ourselves. Read more about their appearance and development in our article.
The emergence of social networks
A social network is a social structure consisting of a group of nodes, which are social objects (people or organizations), and connections between them (social relationships). 
With the advent of the Internet (1969), James Barnes's scientific concept began to gain popularity. This led to the development of social networks on the World Wide Web.
The first social networks on the Internet
The emergence of modern blogs, social networks and the Internet was foreseen by the Russian writer and philosopher Vladimir Fedorovich Odoevsky back in 1835. At that time, he finished writing his utopian novel “The Year 4338.” The world described by the author is in some way reminiscent of the 21st century: “...magnetic telegraphs are installed between familiar houses, through which those living at a far distance talk to each other.” Odoevsky also talks about “home newspapers” published “in many houses, especially among those who have great acquaintances; they replace ordinary correspondence... The duty of publishing such a magazine once a week or daily is assigned to the dining butler in each house. This is done very simply: each time, having received an order from the owners, he writes down everything that was said to him, then takes the required number of copies using a camera obscura and sends them out to his friends. This newspaper usually contains notices about the health or illness of the owners and other home news.”
It is worth noting that Vladimir Fedorovich is not far from reality. However, of course, he could not have known about social networks, blogs and the Internet then.
17 years later, in 1988, Finnish scientist Jarko Oikarinen invented the IRC protocol - Internet relay chat - and software to implement it. It is now possible to communicate with each other in real time.
Then the American Randy Conrads created Classmates.com - the first social network in the modern sense. In it, registered users have access to a directory of graduates from various educational institutions. Thus, anyone can find classmates or fellow students. It is worth noting that Classmates.com immediately turned out to be in great demand. By the way, its popularity does not decline even today - more than 50 million people use the social network. Interestingly, Odnoklassniki is the Russian equivalent of Classmates.com. Currently, they have more than 290 million registered users.
History of the most popular social networks
In this part of the article, we will tell you, dear readers, about the history of the most popular social networks in Russia and the world - Facebook, VKontakte, Twitter and Instagram.
Facebook Inc. was founded on February 4, 2004 by four students who studied at Harvard University: Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. At the same time, a website of the same name appeared. It was initially only available to Harvard students. A little later, registration was opened for universities in Boston, and then for all Americans with email address in the .edu domain. Starting in September 2006, Facebook became available to all Internet users aged 16 years and older. Today it is one of the top five most visited websites in the world. It is not surprising that the network’s monthly audience is 1.968 billion people.
On October 10, 2006, an analogue of Facebook appeared in Russia - the social network “VKontakte”. Its creator is Pavel Durov. The site is available in many languages, but its main audience is Russian-speaking users.
It is worth noting that initially the resource was intended for students and graduates of Russian universities; after a while, it began to position itself as “a modern, fast and aesthetic way of communicating online.” According to SimilarWeb data for December 2017, VKontakte ranks 11th in the ranking of the most popular sites in the world. By the way, more than 410 million users are registered on this social network today.
“They were uploading and sharing photos like crazy,” notes Systrom. In this regard, he and his colleague decide to get rid of all functions, leaving only photo posting.
The move worked, and Burbn, or rather Instagram, gained unprecedented popularity.
Today, the app is ranked 17th on SimilarWeb's list and has more than 200 million active subscribers who have uploaded more than 16 billion different photos and videos.
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With the development of technology Web 2.0 social networks have acquired a tangible basis in the form of portals and web services. So, having found a complete stranger on one of these sites, you can see the chain of intermediate acquaintances through which you are connected with him.
The emergence of social networks was a consequence of the development and spread of the Internet itself. According to statistics, about 50% of the population of our planet are members of some social network, and some are even in several at once. Their popularity is best demonstrated by data on young people: 96% of young people communicate on social networks.
In principle, the emergence of social networks began almost with the birth of the Internet itself in 1969 year. Social networks began their victorious march across the Internet in 1995 year from the American portal Classmates.com (“Odnoklassniki.ru” is its Russian analogue). The project turned out to be very successful, which in the next few years provoked the emergence of dozens of similar services. But The official beginning of the social networking boom is considered to be 2003-2004, when LinkedIn, MySpace and Facebook were launched.
And if LinkedIn was created for the purpose of establishing/maintaining business contacts, then the owners of MySpace and Facebook relied primarily on satisfying the human need for self-expression. After all, according to Maslow’s pyramid, self-expression is the highest human need, even ahead of recognition and communication. Social networks have become a kind of Internet haven where everyone can find the technical and social basis for creating their virtual “I”. At the same time, each user received the opportunity not only to communicate and create, but also to share the fruits of their creativity with a multi-million audience of one or another social network.
first– these are social networks of the mid-90s, pioneers with the simplest functionality;
secondis the creation of social networks with wider functionality for basic interaction (from 2000 to the present day), and the last
thirdpart are social networks that solve specific problems: searching for employees (business networks), games (game networks), searching for information (content networks), etc. According to this theory, we are now gradually moving from the second stage to the third.
Background
Classmates.com
So 
, various researchers suggest considering it the very first
with social o-network resource Classmates.com network, created by Randy Conrads in 1995. The site provided users with the opportunity to reconnect with former classmates, classmates, colleagues,
friends. The network operates to this day and has more than 50 million users in the USA and Canada. In addition, its services are available to residents of Sweden, Germany, Austria and France. But for quite a long time this social portal did not support the functions of creating personal profiles and adding friends. That is, the user could only be connected to his educational institution and provided with a list of students studying at this institution.
SixDegrees.com
based on the theory of six handshakes
Some researchers consider it not Classmates to be the first full-fledged social network, but the SixDegrees.com project, launched in 1997. At that time, many web services offered features such as
creating a personal page or list of friends, but separately. SixDegrees.com was the first social networking service to combine these features, and eventually (in 1998) added new ones, such as searching through friends' pages.
This project was the closest to modern social networks, however, in 2001, the SixDegrees.com portal ceased to exist. Network founder Andrew Weinreich explained this by saying that the service was simply ahead of its time. In 2000, less than half of US residents had access to the Internet. In other words, registered users did not have enough friends and acquaintances with Internet access to make communication on this site at least interesting.
First of all, you should pay attention to the mechanism of formation of social connections and the type of information dissemination. There are three key points that directly affect the classification of the social world. So, for example, for a traditional first-generation service of the “Web 2.0” era, they have the following features:
1 - Users find people they know in real life and decide whether it is interesting to communicate with them or not.
2 - Users find the information they are interested in on their own.
3 – Information is spread virally as public messages. No choice of target audience for a specific information flow .
LiveJournal.comFirst blog hosting
In 1999, an American programmer student opened the service
Livejournal.com. There you could create a fairly detailed profile. Service coming soon
provided the ability to add contacts (friends). Livejournal became the first
mass blog hosting ( electronic diaries) and the first Western social
a service that has become popular in Russia. In terms of number, Russian users are
in second place after the American ones.
Swedish appeared in 2000 LunarStorm, in 2001 – Korean Cyworld.
Ryze.com
Network for businessmen
Social networks of the second wave.
MySpace.com
Third generation networks
In 2004, Mark Zuckerberg (a Harvard student) launched the Facebook portal, which today is the largest social networkYu. But initially registration was only available to Harvard students. Gradually, students from other universities, and then schoolchildren, gained access to Facebook. By 2008, Facebook took the palm from MySpace and became the world's largest social network, the service of which is available in 40 languages. And its founder became the youngest billionaire that year.
FB is a model of the old social platform, which today is difficult to cope with the task facing it and does not at all meet the requirements of our time. This giant stays afloat only due to its authority, which is facilitated by a number of very important factors.
Twitte
r
American programmer Jack Dorsey launched the Twitter project in 2006, which developed most dynamically among new social network projects. The service is compared to regular blog hosting, but the specifics of working with it, the form of the service, as well as the style of messages are somewhat different than in blogs. In 2008, during the Mumbai terrorist attack, Twitter demonstrated that the evolution of social media has created new ways of knowing media.
INcontact - leader in the CIS
Odnoklassniki.ru
Every day, most of us spend at least a few minutes on our online social media profiles. Marketers, business owners, SMM specialists and many others use accounts to promote their brand and increase their audience. We try to select, we strive to create the most unique content, we study, Facebook or Twitter.
But most of us have little understanding of the people who work hard to ensure that we use these resources every day. And if the name Mark Zuckerberg is on everyone’s lips, then probably not everyone will be able to answer what Mr. Silberman’s merit is. In this material there is a brief the history of the creators of the most popular social networks.
Lucky ones or “prophets of a new life path”?
Why know them by sight? Maybe there is no need. But if you are not present on any of the social networks mentioned below, then perhaps brief information about their founders will inspire you to create an account or open up a completely new platform for communicating or promoting your products or services.
After all, today almost every social network provides multifunctional capabilities not only for writing to a friend from another continent “Hello, how are you?”, but, for example, allows you to increase your sales by 10, 15 or 30% in 3 days. Who was the founder of the most popular social networks in the world?
Who invented the most popular social networks?
Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg
Mark Zuckerberg is one of the most popular and influential people in the world. However, Dustin Moskowitz, Eduardo Saverin and Chris Hughes also have every right to sign under the Facebook authorship with him. It was these people in tandem who created one of the most popular social networks.
Mark Zuckerberg is 33 years old today, he is married, has a daughter, and together with his wife they are expecting the birth of their second child. The future creator of Facebook was born into a Jewish medical family near New York. From an early age he was involved in programming and developed online games. He did not complete his education as a psychologist at Harvard and called himself a “hacker.” In 2010 he became “Person of the Year” according to Time magazine.
Today, Mark and the development team never cease to amaze and make ambitious plans. One of them is the creation, which was announced not so long ago at the F8 conference.
Instagram and Kevin Systrom
The American entrepreneur and programmer was born in 1984 in the American state of Massachusetts into a family of marketing and HR executives. Since childhood, Kevin was interested in programming; during his school years he sold records in a store in Boston. He graduated from Stanford University and was interested in photography.
One of the first serious jobs of the future co-founder of Instagram was the position of product marketing manager at Google, then the position of a developer there. After two years of working at the famous company, Kevin's ambitions forced him to leave Google and begin to implement his idea, which is now revered by more than 700 million users around the world.
Twitter and Jack Dorsey
American Jack Dorsey is the co-founder of Twitter along with Evan Williams and Biz Stone, but most often it is his name that is put first when talking about the authors of the popular social network. The 41-year-old software architect by training started out as interesting developments in the field of logistics, which is still used by some taxi services. The idea of creating Twitter came to young Jack while studying at one of the universities in New York. Twitter was inspired by the example of LiveJournal.
One of the latest high-profile developments on Twitter is the possibility of live broadcasts.
Tumblr and David Karp
One of the youngest founders of social networks, David Karp, was barely 31 years old. The American entrepreneur who invented the microblogging service was awarded several times with high prizes and awards, in particular by BusinessWeek and Technology Review magazines.
Born and raised in New York City, he was homeschooled for some time. He began his active career by working as a consultant for software for one of the American Internet portals. It took the young talent just over a year to develop and launch the first version of Tumblr, which is now popular all over the world.
Pinterest and Ben Silberman
The 35-year-old American entrepreneur is considered one of the founders of the rapidly growing visual social network Pinterest. However, it is his name that is most often used when mentioning the authorship of a social Internet resource. Ben was raised in a family of ophthalmologists and was educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Yale University. His career includes working at Google and developing his own iPhone application.
Pinterest is becoming more and more popular every day, developing along with its main competitor – Instagram. The developers of the social network have already implemented many functions that make .
LinkedIn and Reed Hoffman
This year's celebrant, 50-year-old Reed Hoffman, is not only the founder of the professional social network LinkedIn, but also an author, billionaire and co-founder large quantity companies. Born and raised in California, he received a Bachelor of Science degree from the same Stanford University, then became a Master of Philosophy at Oxford. Worked at Apple computers.
In December 2002, he initiated the creation of one of the first business social networks – LinkedIn.
Snapchat and Evan Spiegel
The mobile messaging app Snapchat was also invented by more than one person. American entrepreneur Evan Spiegel was helped by Bobby Murphy and Reggie Brown.
Evan Spiegel is also a graduate of the famous Stanford University. The 27-year-old American was raised in a family of lawyers from California, who sent young Evan to a school with an emphasis on art and science. At an early age, Spiegel interned for free in the Red Bull sales department and worked for a medical company. In May of this year he married the famous Australian model Miranda Kerr.
Odnoklassniki and Albert Popkov
This year, the creator of the oldest Russian-language social network Odnoklassniki celebrates his 45th anniversary. He was not an exemplary student, dropped out of school, tried many jobs, but eventually came to programming. While studying at a technical school in Moscow, he developed software for Soviet gaming computers.
Since 1995, he began actively developing websites. His career list includes the position of director of development at help desk. Launched the Odnoklassniki project in 2006. Albert was named “Person of the Year 2008” by the International Union of Internet Activists.
VKontakte, Telegram and Pavel Durov
Former general manager VKontakte and creator Telegram messenger, 33-year-old Pavel Durov as a student never tired of collecting scholarships and awards: he was awarded a scholarship by the President of the Russian Federation, was a three-time winner of the Potanin Scholarship and other high awards.
It is curious that the versatile Durov received a diploma with honors from St. Petersburg State University with a degree in English Philology and Translation, and before that he studied in a military specialty at the same educational institution. It is also interesting that Durov’s father is a Doctor of Philology, and his brother is a candidate of physical and mathematical disciplines.
What do you think of the success stories of the founders of these famous social networks? How many of the resources listed above do you use for work and personal purposes? Be sure to share in the comments!
Of course, other social networks are also popular today. It happens that you have to say goodbye to some of them against your will. This happened with the LinkedIn network in Russia or VKontakte in Ukraine, when the governments of these countries, for various reasons, blocked access to social networks. Subscribers had to look for or try alternatives.
If you manage accounts on several social networks and you constantly don’t have enough time for it, use a convenient auto-posting tool. The functionality of the SMM service KUKU.io allows you to quickly and accurately plan publications, organize them in a content calendar, select the desired time zones and track analytics even for an individual post.
By the way, posts to all of the social networks listed above (except Snapchat) can be scheduled using KUKU.io. Don't miss this opportunity!
