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GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIAL

NETWORKING SITES

A
DISSERTATION
SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE
REQUIREMENT FOR THE DEGREE OF
MASTER OF LIBRARY AND INFORMATION SCIENCE
(M.L.I.Sc.)

By
TYNSHAIN KHONGNGAIN

SUPERVISOR
Dr. BIKIKA LALOO

DEPARTMENT OF
LIBRARY AND INFORMATION SCIENCE
NORTH EASTERN HILL UNIVERSITY
SHILLONG 793022
(2013 2015)

Department of library and Information Science

North Eastern Hill University

DECLARATION

I Tynshain Khongngain hereby declare that the work

contained in my dissertation entitled Growth and
Development of Social Networking Sites has been
originally collected and prepared by me under the supervision
of Dr. Bikika Laloo.

Place: Shillong
Date: 15/07/2015

Tynshain Khongngain
Student

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I Tynshain Khongngain would first and foremost express my
heartiest gratitude to GOD for granting me the wisdom and ability
to do my dissertation. Surely, without His Grace and mercy I would
not be able to complete and do my best in the dissertation.
My gratitude also goes to our supervisor Dr. Bikika Laloo for
giving me the opportunity to do a dissertation on Growth and
Development of Social Networking Sites.
My prayer and gratitude also goes to my classmates for
helping me in this dissertation. I also thank my parents, brother,
sisters and my friends for their prayer and support.

Place: Shillong
Date: 15/07/2015

Tynshain Khongngain
Student

ii

Table of Contents
PAGE NO.
DECLARATION........................................................................ I
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................ II

CHAPTER 1 ........................................................................ 1-8

1.1 INTRODUCTION ................................................................. 1
1.2 DEFINITION ...................................................................... 7
CHAPTER 2 ........................................................................ 9-9
2.1 OBJECTIVES ..................................................................... 9
2.2 METHODOLOGY ................................................................ 9
CHAPTER 3 ........................................................................ 10-16
3.1 ORIGIN OF SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES ................................ 10
3.2 HISTORY OF SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES ............................. 13
CHAPTER 4 ........................................................................ 17-19
4.1 GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT ............................................. 17
CHAPTER 5 ........................................................................ 20-33
5.1
5.1.0
5.1.1
5.1.2
5.1.3
5.1.4
5.1.5
5.1.6
5.1.7
5.1.8
5.1.9
5.1.10
5.1.11

TYPES OF SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES........................... 20

SIXDEGREES.COM....................................................... 20
BLACKPLANET ............................................................ 21
LIVEJOURNAL ............................................................. 22
CYWORLD .................................................................. 23
LUNARSTORM ............................................................. 23
FRIENDSTER .............................................................. 24
HI5 ........................................................................... 25
MYSPACE .................................................................. 26
FLICKR ...................................................................... 27
FACEBOOK................................................................. 28
TWITTER .................................................................... 31
INSTAGRAM ................................................................ 32

CHAPTER 6 ........................................................................ 34-42

6.1
6.1.0
6.1.1
6.1.2
6.1.3
6.1.4
6.1.5

KEY PEOPLE INVOLVED WITH SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES .. 34

SIXDEGREES.COM ......................................................... 35
LIVEJOURNAL ............................................................... 36
HI5 .............................................................................. 37
MYSPACE ..................................................................... 37
FACEBOOK ................................................................... 39
TWITTER ...................................................................... 41

CHAPTER 7 ........................................................................ 43-43

7.1 CONCLUSION.................................................................... 43
REFERENCES .................................................................... 44-48

CHAPTER 1

1.1 INTRODUCTION
Originally the word social is derived from the Latin word socii (allies). It is
particularly derived from the Italian socii states, historical allies of the Roman
Republic. In the absence of agreement about its meaning , the term social is used
in different senses and regarded as a fuzzy concept, referring among other things to:
attitudes , orientations as behaviors which takes the interests, intentions or needs of
the other people into account.
They say man is a social animal and hence he cannot live alone. He needs
family, friends, neighbours, co-workers and so on in order to live happily. Over the
years, the human beings socialise with each other has change drastically. In olden
days, word of mouth was the main way in which people communicate with each
other. Then people started writing letters, telegrams and so on. The evolution or we
can say, the advancement in science and technology have played a very important role
in the further development of socializing.
At the most basic level social networking sites are sites which allow users to
set up online profiles or personal homepages, and develop an online social network.
The profile page functions as the users own webpage and includes profile
information ranging from their date of birth, gender, religion, politics and hometown,
to their favourite films, books quotes and what they like doing in their spare time.

In addition to profile information, users can design the appearance of their

page, and add content such as photos, video clips and music files. Users are able to
build a network of connections that they can display as a list of friends. These friends
may be offline actual friends or acquaintances, or people they only know or have met
online, and with whom they have no other link. It is important to note that the term
friend, as used on a social networking site, is different from the traditional meaning
given to the term in the offline world.
The 21st century has seen a lot of advancement in the way people socialize
with each other. The comings of various social networking sites have made the way
people communicate faster, cheaper and more reliable. In this age of technology, we
cant probably imagine our life without social networking sites. We use them daily to
catch up with our fiends, to find out lasted scoops, etc. Infact, the social network ideas
was originally created in order to connect and to communicate.
A social network service is an online services, platform, or sites that focus on
facilitating the building of social network or social relations among people who for
example, share, interest, activities backgrounds, or real life connections. A social
network service consist a representation of each other (often a few life), his or her
social links, and a variety of additional services. Most social service are web based
and provide means for users to interact over the internet, such as email and instant
messaging. Online community services are sometimes considered as social network
service, though in a broader sense, social network service usually means an
individual centered service whereas online community service are group centered.
Social networking sites allow users to share ideas activities, events and interests with
their individual networks.

There are many wonderful things about our modern society, with Social
network being one of those wonderful uses of technology. However, it should be
mentioned that technology can be used for both good and bad purposes. Social
network sites (SNS) are increasingly attracting the attention of academic and industry
researchers intrigued by their affordances and reach. On the contrary, SNSs had been
studied from the beginning of 20th century with the aim to comprehend how the
members of a certain community interact and which mechanism can determine the
interaction itself.
In communities around the world, teenagers are joining SNS like MySpace,
Facebook, and Bebo. Once logged into one of these systems, participants are asked to
create a profile to represent themselves digitally. Using text, images, video, audio,
links, quizzes, and surveys, teens generate a profile that expresses how they see
themselves. These profiles are sewn together into a large web through 'Friends' lists.
Participants can mark other users as 'Friends'. If that other person agrees with the
relationship assertion, a photo of each is displayed on the profile of the other. Through
careful selection, participants develop a 'Friends' list.
The collection of 'Friends' is not simply a list of close ties (or what we would
normally call 'friends'). Instead, this feature allows participants to articulate their
imagined audience - or who they see being a part of their world within the site. While
SNS have millions of users, most participants only care about a small handful of
them. Who they care about is typically represented by the list of Friends. If an
individual imagines her profile to be primarily of concern to a handful of close
friends, she is quite likely to have a few Friends and, if the technology allows it, keep

her profile private. If she wants to be speaking to her broader peers, her Friends list is
likely to have hundreds or thousands of Friends who are roughly the same age, have
the same style, listen to the same music, and are otherwise quite similar to her. She is
also quite likely to keep her profile visible to anyone so that she can find others in her
peer group (boyd, 2006).Profiles and Friends lists are two key features on social
network sites. The third is a public commenting feature ('Testimonials', 'Comments',
'The Wall'). This feature allows individuals to comment on their Friends' profiles.
These comments are displayed prominently and visible for anyone who has access to
that profile. These three features - profiles, Friends lists, and comments - comprise the
primary structure of social network sites, although individual sites provide additional
features for further engagement. While SNSes allow visitors to wander from Friend to
Friend and communicate with anyone who has a visible profile, the primary use
pattern is driven by pre-existing friend groups. People join the sites with their friends
and use the different messaging tools to hang out, share cultural artifacts and ideas,
and communicate with one another.
In an era where political campaigns are not about issues, but about how to
destroy your opponents good name, anything posted on a social network site is fodder
for anyone who supports your opponent. Through social network, people are allowed
to quickly share and exchange information with friends, family, and even complete
strangers through the posting of URLs, images, or statuses on personal pages or
through private messaging featured on social network sites.

The ease of sharing information has allowed people to keep in contact with
friends and family and keep them updated on life changes, views of various subjects,
collaborate on projects, and much more. This is all very exciting and wonderful. But,
your privacy is compromised by any post at any time on this medium. Information on
social network sites makes it much easier to become a victim of identity theft, cyber
bullying, and even character assassination. Information that is placed on social
network sites can also be stolen or restrictions can be put in place as to what sites can
be accessed by members of the public and what can be posted on these sites.
SNS are virtual communities where users can create individual public profiles,
interact with real-life friends, and meet other people based on shared interests. SNSs
are web-based services that allow individuals to: (1) construct a public or semipublic profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom
they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those
made by others within the system. SNS are an inherent part of everyday: privately,
we keep updated on friends and family members whereabouts; at work, we use the
social networking sites to keep us informed about news in a research field, to find the
experts to ask or the right jobs to apply for, and public institutions send alerts via the
social network to warn about disasters.
SNS offer people new and varied ways to communicate via the internet,
whether through their PC or their mobile phone. They allow people to easily and
simply create their own online page or profile and to construct and display an online
network of contacts, often called friends. Users of these sites can communicate via
their profile both with their friends and with people outside their list of contacts.

This can be on a one-to-one basis (much like an email), or in a more public way such
as a comment posted for all to see. Members create their own online profile with data,
pictures, and any other information. They communicate with each other by voice,
chat, instant message, videoconferencing, and the service typically provides a way for
members to connect by making connections through individuals is known as Social
networking. Now days there are many web sites dedicated to the Social Networking,
some popular websites such as Facebook, Orkut, Twitter, Myspace, Friendster and hi5
are very commonly used by the people. These websites are also known as
communities network sites. Social networking websites function like an online
community of internet users. Depending on the website in question, many of these
online community members share common interests in hobbies, discussion. Once you
access to a social networking website you can begin to socialize. This socialization
may include reading the profile pages of other members and possibly even contacting
them.

1.2 DEFINITIONS
Boyd and Ellison (2007) define social network services as web-based services
which allow individuals to Construct a public or semipublic profile within a bounded
system, Communicate with other users; and View the pages and details provided by
other users within the system. The social networking websites have evolved as a
combination of personalized media experience, within social context of participation.
The practices that differentiate social networking sites from other types of computermediated communication are uses of profiles, friends and comments or testimonials
profiles are publicly viewed, friends are publicly articulated, and comments are
publicly visible.
Geroimenko& Chen (2007) explain that Users who join Social networking
websites are required to make a profile of themselves by filling up a form. After
filling up the forms, users are supposed to give out information about their personality
attributes and personal appearances. Some social networking websites require photos
but most of them will give details about ones age, preference, likes and dislikes.
Some social networking websites like Facebook allow users to customize their
profiles by adding multimedia content.
Boyd and Ellison (2008) have summarized recent research and social network
history. They define social networks are web-based services that allow users to build a
public or semi-public within a system; articulate a user list with shared relationships;
and observe the list of relationships of those persons with other people within the
system. They also explain that SixDegrees.com was chronologically the first social
network but disappeared in 2000.

Social Networking Sites have been described by Neil Selwyn (2009) as,
personal and personalizable spaces for online conversations and sharing of content
based typically on the maintenance and sharing of profiles where individual users
can represent themselves to other users through the display of personal information,
interests, photographs, social networks and so on
Tapscott and Williams (2006) consider social networks as a part of a wider
trend in communication landscapes. They characterize it as mass collaboration. In
their opinion, transparency, peer collaboration, audience participation and
globalization are changing markets and companies and social networks like YouTube
or MySpace are crucial. A new type of market is being shaped: copyright,
communication strategy and message control by hierarchical management structures
is increasingly under attack. Wikipedia is described as symbol of this process that is
influencing the communication of brands, fashion, markets, ideas and ideology.

CHAPTER 2

2.1 OBJECTIVES
The objectives carried out in my study, is mainly:
i.

To identify the origin of Social Networking Sites.

ii.

To examine the Growth of Social Networking Sites.

iii.

To examine the different types of Social Networking Sites.

iv.

To explore the people involved in a particular Social Networking Sites.

2.2 METHODOLOGY
The method carried out in my study was a literature Review where all the
information was searched from various Books and Journals available in the N.E.H.U.
Central Library (i.e. Print Sources).
Apart from books and journals, internet searching was also carried out, for the
purpose of finding information relevant to the topic cited above. The internet
searching wasdone from various Websites such as Google, Yahoo, etc. (Online
Sources).
The articles collected for this study are arranged year wise according to the
objectives stated above and some of their related sub-points are mentioned in
reviewing of this literature.

CHAPTER 3

3.1 THE ORIGIN OF SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES

Hiltz and Turoff (1978) indicates that the history of online social networks
goes back to 1978 when computer scientist Murray Turoff and S. Roxanne Hiltz
established the Electronic Information Exchange System at the New Jersey Institute
of Technology for the US Office of Civilian Defense, which allowed users to email
each other, see the bulletin board and utilize the list server.
Boyd and Ellison (2004) explain that SixDegrees.com was chronologically the
first social network but disappeared in 2000. The most important current social
networks were established after 2002: Fotolog (2002), LinkedIn (2003), MySpace
(2003), Last.FM (2003), Hi5 (2003), Orkut (2004), Flickr (2004),Facebook (2004),
YouTube (2005), Bebo (2005), Ning (2005) y Twitter (2006). From 2003 on social
networks reach the mainstream, and start producing audience figures we could
consider massive. Their audience growth has been explosive. In April 2009,
Facebook had 200 million users worldwide: in March 2010 it had reached 400
million. By November 2010, Facebooks estimated audience is more than 547 million
users. Only 26% of the users are in the United States: we are facing a genuinely
global phenomenon. Twitter shows more modest audience figures (19 million in
March 2009; 75 million in March 2010), and more than 44% of users are in the
United States2. Nevertheless, the figures speak by themselves and might well give
Facebook and Twitter a place in the history of communications.

10

Junco et. al. (2010) defined that social network, derived from the social
software movement, are a collection of Internet websites, services, and practices that
support collaboration, community building, participation, and sharing.
Clippinger (2000) shows that human beings have evolved as a social species
and have consequently developed highly sophisticated social signaling and
enforcement mechanisms that reward and enforce complex forms of cooperative
behaviors. Our ancestors, the primates, are the evidence of our social character. You
might have seen them on discovery channel living in groups. We are social animals,
as the sociologists say. There are other instances that reveal the sociality of human
beings. Our family, group of friends, the city and the country where we live in and all
other groupings show that we want to be in a social context. In fact, by living in a
certain region, city and country, we form networks. Human beings want to live in
networks of people. A research on world population by Population Bulletin (2007)
shows that more than 60% of the worlds population will live in cities by 2030. There
are many reasons behind this phenomenon, including the need to be in a social
context.
According to Cassidy (2006) the first social networking websites was
launched in the year 1997 Sixdegrees.com. This company was the first of its kind; it
allowed user to list their profiles, provide a list of friends and then contact them.
However, the Company did not do verywell as it eventually closed three years later.
The reason for this was that many people using the internet at that time had not
formed many social networks hence there was little room for maneuver. It should be
noted that there were also other elements that hinted at Social network websites. For
instance, dating sites required users to give their profiles but they could not share

11

other people's websites. Additionally, there were some websites that would link
former school mates but the lists could not be shared with others.
According to Freierman (1998) sixdegrees.com which was developed in 1997
(the name refers to Milgram's famous small world study that found out randomly
selected two American citizens can be connected to each other by six nodes) became
the first widely known website to allow its users to establish an online social network.
Boyd & Ellison (2007) defined that social networking is a web-based service
that allows its users to construct a profile that other users can see and list connections
with other users. In many ways the ideas behind social networking sites are not new.
It has been possible since the early days of the internet to do many of the things which
social networking site users do now, such as creating personal web pages and
communicating with others through interfaces such as chat rooms, internet forums,
message boards, web communities and blogs.

12

3.2 HISTORY OF SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES

In terms of SNS history, the first social networking site (SixDegrees.com) was
launched in 1997, based on the idea that everybody is linked with everybody else via
six degrees of separation and initially referred to as the small world problem
(Boyd,2004). SixDegrees.com allowed users to create profiles, list their Friends and,
beginning in 1998, surf the Friends lists. AIM and ICQ buddy lists supported lists of
Friends, although those Friends were not visible to others. Classmates.com allowed
people to affiliate with their high school or college and surf the network for others
who were also affiliated, but users could not create profiles or list Friends until years
later. SixDegrees was the first SNS to combine these features. While SixDegrees
attracted millions of users, it failed to become a sustainable business and, in 2000, the
service closed.
From 1997 to 2001, more sites began to crop up.

These sites included

AsianAvenue, BlackPlanet, and MiGente that allowed users to create personal,

professional and dating profiles-These friend lists did not have to be approved by the
other users (Boyd & Ellison, 2007). Another site that began during this time was
LiveJournal. This site also allowed for friend lists that did not need to be approved;
the creator of the site said that he got the idea from the AIM buddy list. On the site
LiveJournal, users can share their journals online for the friends to see their journals
and manage privacy settings. The Korean virtual worlds site Cyworld was started in
1999 and added SNS features in 2001, independent of these other sites.

13

The next wave of SNSs began when Ryze.com was launched in 2001 to help
people leverage their business networks. Ryzes founder reports that he first
introduced the site to his friendsprimarily members of the San Francisco business
and technology community, including the entrepreneurs and investors behind many
future SNSs (A. Scott, 2007).
Friendster launched in 2002 as a social complement to Ryze. It was designed
to compete with Match.com, a profitable online dating site (Cohen, 2003). While most
dating sites focused on introducing people to strangers with similar interests,
Friendster was designed to help friends-of-friends meet, based on the assumption that
friends-of-friends would make better romantic partners than would strangers (J.
Abrams, 2003). The initial design of Friendster restricted users from viewing profiles
of people who were more than four degrees away (friends-of-friends-of-friends-offriends).
From 2003 onward, many new SNSs were launched, prompting social
software analyst Clay Shirky (2003) to coin the term YASNS: Yet Another Social
Networking Service. Mosttook the form of profile-centric sites, trying to replicate
the early success of Friendster or target specific demographics. While sociallyorganized SNSs solicit broad audiences, professional sites such as LinkedIn, Visible
Path, and Xing (formerly openBC) focus on business people. Passion-centric SNSs
like Dogster (T. Rheingold, personal communication, August 2, 2007) help strangers
connect based on shared interests.

14

In the wake of Friendsters collapse, MySpace was begun in 2003. MySpace

planned to inherit the discontented ex-Friendster users, and succeeded. A group that
they unintentionally also inherited was members of indie-rock bands. These people
were banned from using Friendster when fakesters were discovered. Fakester was
the term given to fake profiles, profiles of people who didnt exist or joke profiles
of celebrities.

When Friendster tried to wipe out these profiles, they also

inadvertently killed the profiles that were serving as home pages for the indie bands.
As a result, the indie-rock bands not only switched their membership over to
MySpace, but also advocated for other Friendster users to make the switch. In
addition, MySpace set itself apart by adding features as demanded by the users. It
also allowed for the users to put html code in their profiles to personalize them. This
was a first for any social networking site (Boyd & Ellison, 2007). The inclusion of
user-designed profiles made possible by the flexibility of html was an instant hit.
Future sites found success when adding these customizable interfaces.
Mark Zuckerberg, 23, founded Facebook while studying psychology at
Harvard University. A keen computer programmer, MrZuckerberg had already
developed a number of social-networking websites for fellow students, including
Coursematch, which allowed users to view people taking their degree, and Facemash,
where you could rate people's attractiveness.
In February 2004 MrZuckerberg launched "The facebook", as it was originally
known; the name taken from the sheets of paper distributed to freshmen, profiling
students and staff. Within 24 hours, 1,200 Harvard students had signed up, and after
one month, over half of the undergraduate population had a profile. Due to its
popularity however, it was opened up to other colleges and high schools in 2005, and

15

then to corporate networks in 2006. Closely following this, Facebook was open to
anyone with a valid email address in late 2006. A distinct element of Facebook is its
application feature; the ability for outside developers to make applications that are
utilized through Facebook. These applications add excitement to the site and can
personalize user profiles.
Twitter was founded in 2006 and gained a lot of popularity during 2007.
Status updates have become the new norm in social networking. The concept of
Twitter relies on messaging services, whether it uses a cell phone, instant messenger,
such as Yahoo Messenger or MSN Messenger, or through specific websites. It allows
the user to send messages to friends and family quickly and easily. Twitter only asks
one question, What are you doing? As long as an answer is 140 characters or less, it
is possible for thousands of people to see the answer immediately. Twitter can be
linked to other social networks, blogs, and websites. For instance, post a blog update
and use the Twitter button. The blog entry will be sent to the people specified by the
sender. This only works when logged into the Twitter account. A user can also follow
other users as well. It's easy to have conversations with other people, and before long,
many people will be watching updates from many different people.

16

CHAPTER 4

4.1 GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT OF SNS

Wellman (1988) explains that the rise of SNS indicates a shift in the
organization of online communities. While websites dedicated to communities of
interest still exist and prosper, SNS are primarily organized around people, not
interests. Early public online communities such as Usenet and public discussion
forums were structured by topics or according to topical hierarchies, but social
network sites are structured as personal (or "egocentric") networks, with the
individual at the center of their own community. This more accurately mirrors
unmediated social structures, where "the world is composed of networks, not groups".
Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff (2008), two Forrester Research analysts, showed
through 25 real world cases how companies increase their market knowledge,
generate income, save money and mobilize their employees using social
technologies. Such firms follow a groundswell model, similar to a wave that
sweeps markets. Li and Bernoff consider that there is definite social trend towards
people using technologies to get what they need from other people, instead of relying
in traditional institutions like companies. The consequences are almost revolutionary:
control is weakened and reduced, when control has been the foundation of
communication strategies for businesses and institutions. Li and Bernoff stress the
need to understand how new relationships are created in social network: technologies
have changed but the impact in personal relationships is even more profound.

17

Choi (2006) argued that some other social networking services entered the
market even though most of them did relatively well in non-English speaking
countries. Some of them include Orkut in Brazil, Lunar Storm in Sweden, Grono in
Poland and Cyworld in South Korea.
Lacy (2010) defines that Social networks have also been considered in market
research as a new tool for collecting information. In 2008 Facebook and LinkedIn
began to offer the possibility of conducting market research inside their social
network. LinkedIn is no longer providing this service and in Facebook, the application
My Questions by Slide, downloaded 7.4 million times is no longer available.
However, there are many other applications that allow Facebook users to create their
own surveys. It is the case of Fun Surveys, with more than 90.000 monthly active
users in April 2010. Even the US Census Bureau have used social media to find
people from 18 to 24 who are primarily renters and/or college students (unattached
mobiles) hardly to find by other techniques.
Wang and Braman (2009) defined that Second Life is a three dimensional
(3D) electronic environment where members can socialize, hold virtual meetings, or
conduct economic transactions. Utilizing virtual environments like Second Life is
believed to provide educators with a new medium for teaching and information
dissemination that bypasses the normal boundaries associated with traditional online
and facetoface interactions. This unique platform not only provides educators with
traditional online teaching conventions but also allows for simulated social
interactions, which are essential to studentteacher relations in the classroom. This
paper presents a series of field trials and focuses on one recent case study of the

18

integration of Second Life into an introductory computer course. The benefits, lessons
learned and effective practices of integrating the technology are provided. The case
study findings are supplemented with results from student surveys. The study found
that the integration of Second Life activities improved students' learning experience.
Furthermore, students participated in the Second Life activities in the case study
showed higher learning motivation and better performance.
Qualman (2009) deals with social network in his book Socialnomics. He
describes an age of instant communication, transparency (we live in what he terms
glass-house effect), narcissism and participation. It is a landscape where
authenticity is a currency of exchange and mass communications do not work, as
audiences go back to trust in close persons and traditional media decline. He also
explores Obamas rise to power and explores future implications withexpressions like
what happens in Vegas stays in YouTube or we will no longer look for the news,
the news will find us. Qualman looks at the social media phenomenon and assesses
its impact on interpersonal relationships. His book shows how strategy, marketing and
markets are influenced and explores how some brands feel very comfortable in such a
context. In his opinion, social media are more revolution than ephemeral fashion.

19

CHAPTER 5

5.1 TYPES OF SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES

Social networking sites are Internet sites where people interact freely, sharing
and discussing information about each other and their lives, using a multimedia mix
of personal words, pictures, videos and audio.
At these Web sites, individuals and groups create and exchange content and
engage in person-to-personconversations.
They appear in many forms including blogs and microblogs, forums and
message boards, social networks, wikis, virtual worlds, social bookmarking, tagging
and news, writing communities, digital storytelling and scrapbooking, and data,
content, image and video sharing, podcast portals, and collective intelligence.
There are lots of well-known sites and Some of the major SNS discuss in this
chapter are as follows:-

SixDegrees.com
Plymale (2012) state that the website that is widely regarded as the first
popular modern social networking site is SixDegrees.com and at its peak of
popularity, Six Degrees had well over onemillion users. It was created based on the
theory that every person in the world could beconnected to each other by just six
degrees of separation. The site lasted from 1997 until 2001.

20

The site was the first to combine personal profiles, instant messaging, friends lists and
the ability to search other members friends lists. It was really the predecessor to sites
like Myspace and Facebook.
Six Degrees may have been created a bit before its time. As the site grew, the
world of online advertising was in its infancy and Weinreich was unable to keep the
site afloat. Spam problems and revenue issues ultimately doomed the site and it shut
down in 2001. In 2010, the site attempted a rebirth. People that had existing
memberships with Six Degrees have been invited back with hopes of recreating the
network.

BlackPlanet
Byrne (2008) uses content analysis to examine civic engagement in forums on
BlackPlanet and finds that online discussions are still plagued with the problems
offline activists have longencountered. Drawing on interview and observation data on
his study he explores community life on a black social network site, BlackPlanet, to
see whether and how participants engage in public discussions; if these discussions
center on issues considered to be critical to the black community; and if so, the extent
to which participants online networks are used to foster some level of civic
engagement. Participation analysis, content analysis, and a thematic analysis were
used to analyze public discussions on the sites community forums.

21

LiveJournal
Boyd & Ellison(2007) define that LiveJournal is a community publishing
platform, willfully blurring the lines between blogging and social networking. Since
1999 LiveJournal has been home to a wide array of creative individuals looking to
share common interests, meet new friends, and express themselves. LiveJournal
encourages communal interaction and personal expression by offering a user-friendly
interface and a deeply customizable journal. The service's individuality stems from
the way highly dedicated users utilize our simple tools, along with the instinct for
individual expression, to create new venues for online socializing. Because
ofLiveJournal's unique combination of platform and social network, LiveJournal has a
unique personality in different parts of the world. In fact every national community in
every country is unique in its own way. Where a user in the United States might focus
their attention on communities dedicated to topics from the popular to the esoteric,
users in the U.K. may tend torally around entertainment-related issues. In Russia
LiveJournal makes up the vast majority of the blogosphere, hosting over 80 of the top
100 Russian blogs. In Singapore LiveJournal revolves around collaboratively
purchasing overseas goods. With more than 50 million journals on topics like politics,
entertainment, fashion, literature and design, some key similarities emerge: the overall
culture is distinctly open source-not only from a product perspective-but from a
cultural one. The spirit of volunteerism pervades LiveJournal, crossing all boundaries
and propagated via insanely passionate individuals. At LiveJournal creativity,
diversity and tolerance are the mainstream.

22

Cyworld
According to Kim and Yun (2007) the Korean virtual world sites, Cyworld
was started in 1999 and added Social Networking Sites features in 2001. They also
analyze how Cyworld supports both interpersonal relations and self-relation for
Korean users. They trace the subtle ways in which deeply engrained cultural beliefs
and activities are integrated into online communication and behaviors on Cyworld
the online context reinforces certain aspects of users' cultural expectations about
relationship maintenance (e.g., the concept of reciprocity), while the unique
affordances of Cyworld enable participants to overcome offline constraints. The
Chinese QQinstant messaging service instantly became the largest SNS worldwide
when it added profiles and made friends visible (McLeod, 2006), while the forum tool
Cyworld cornered the Korean market by introducing homepages and buddies (Ewers,
2006). In Korea, Cyworld has become an integral part of everyday life - Choi (2006)
found that 85% of his study's respondents "listed the maintenance and reinforcement
of pre existing social networks as their main motive for Cyworld use"

LunarStorm
Skog (2005) found that the status feature on LunarStorm strongly influenced
how people behaved and what they choose to revealprofiles there indicate one's
status as measured by activity (e.g., sending messages) and indicators of authenticity
(e.g., using a "real" photo instead of a drawing). Hence, the Swedish web community

23

LunarStorm refashioned itself as social networking sites in 2000, it contained Friends

lists, guestbooks, and diary pages.

Friendster
According to Boyd (2004) Friendster began its operations in the year 2002. It
was a brother company to Ryze but was designed to deal with the social aspect of
their market. The company was like a dating service, however, match making was not
done in the typical way where strangers met. Instead, friends would propose which
individuals are most compatible with one another. At first, there was an exponential
growth of the Comply. This was especially afterintroduction of network for gay men
and increase in number of bloggers. The latter would usually tell their friends about
the advantages of social networking through Friendster and this led to further
expansion.

However,

Friendster

had

established

market

base

in

one

smallcommunity. After their subscribers reached overwhelming numbers, the

company could no longer cope with the demand. There were numerous complaints
about the way their servers were handled because subscribers would experience
communication breakdowns. As if this was not enough, social networks in the real
world were not doing well; some people would find themselves dating their bosses or
former classmates since the virtual community created by the company was rather
small. The Company also started limiting the level of connection between enthusiastic
users.

24

Hi5
According

to

Comscore

(2007)

Hi5

was

launched

in

2003

by

RamuYalamanchi, and was one of the early social networks. Hi5 has received
millions of dollars in funding and has attracted millions of registered users. The
founder of Hi5, RamuYalamanchi, is an American computer scientist and
entrepreneur of Indian descent.It was one of the most successful social networks;
competing with Myspace for market share. However, with the launch of Facebook in
2004, both Hi5 and Myspace struggled to compete with the phenomenal success of
the Facebook social networking service. Hi5 is one of the largest social entertainment
sites in the world, with approximately 50 million monthly unique visitors who use the
site to stay connected to friends,meet new people, share photos, and play games.
Available in over 50 languages, hi5 combines ad-supported social networking features
with payment-based premium content to deliver a user experience focused on selfexpression and interactivity that appeals to the site's young demographic (67% of
users are age 18-34). Social games, virtual goods, and other premium content on the
site is monetized through hi5 Coins, a virtual currency supporting over 60 payment
methods and 30 currencies worldwide. The site also supports third-party games and
other applications through its OpenSocial platform. The original Hi5 website
incorporated all the traditional features of a social networking service:

Friends list

Photo album

User groups

Private messaging

25

Status updates

Favourties

Public profile with interests, age and home town

MySpace
Backstrom (2006) define that by 2003, there were numerous companies
formed with the purpose of providing social networking service. However, most of
them did not attract too much attention especially in the US market. For instance,
LinkedIn and Xing were formed for business persons while services like MyChurch,
Dogster and Couchsurfing were formed for social services. Other companies that had
been engaging in other services started offering social networking services. For
instance, the YouTube and Last.FM were initially formed to facilitate video and
music sharing respectively. However, the started adopted social networking services.

As MySpace became a popular place for teenagers, many worried it would

attract sexual predators and pornographers looking to take advantage of young people.
Columnist Hagelin (2006) noted that MySpace.com has quickly become the malt shop
for todays teensbut unlike [a physical place], this virtual hang out is also
frequented by unsavory characters who are after our kids. What most teens see as just
a fun place to connect with friends has become a sexual predators and
pornographers playground.

26

Flickr
Educause (2008) explain that flickr is a photo-sharing website where anyone
can upload and tag photos, browse others photos, and add comments and annotations.
Users can create photo sets and collections to manage content, and participate in
topical groups to cultivate a sense of community. Launched in February 2004, Flickr
embodies what has come to be known as Web 2.0 technology. The site provides the
tools, but the value derives from the contributions of the user communityphotos,
comments, ratings, and organizationand the connections that the site facilitates
between individuals. Flickr also provides a range of privacy settings, giving users
considerable control over how their photos can be used.
Dieberger et. al. (2000) define that Flickr is one of the crop of new social
media sites, along with blogs, wikis and their kin, that are transforming the Web to a
participatory medium where the users are actively creating, evaluating and
distributing information. Flickrs interface is exceedingly simple. A user can upload
images to Flickr or view and comment on other users images. A user can annotate an
image with tags or submit it to a variety of special interest groups. Like many other
social media sites, Flickr also allows users to designate others as friends or
contacts and offers an interface to see in one place the latestimages submitted by
these friends. The friends lists form the social network backbone of Flickr. In their
research they also examine how people use Flickr: specifically, how they find new
images to view. They claim that the social networks on Flickr facilitate new ways of
interacting with informationwhat we call social browsing. Rather than searching for
images by keywords (tags) or subscribing to special interests groups, users can

27

browse through the images created by photographers they had selected as being most
interesting or relevant to them. We should note that social browsing is an important
method used for navigating Flickr.

According to Cox et. al. (2008) in their study they found that the use of Flickr,
a photo sharing Website, is examined in the context of amateur photography as a
serious leisure pursuit. Eleven telephone interviews were carried out with users of
Flickr, using an open-ended interview schedule to explore use of the system within
the context of the interviewers photographic practices. Practices described are set
against theoretical considerations from the literature, specifically the alternate
paradigms of the photographic club and the photo magazine.

Facebook
Charnigo and Barnett-Ellis (2007) explain that this social networking service
was introduced with the purpose of linking friends in Harvard University in 2004.
Thereafter, the company expanded to other universities then colleges. Eventually,
they invited corporate communities. But this does not mean that profiles would be
interchanged at will. There are lots of restrictions between friends who join the
universities social network because they need to have the .eduaddress. Additionally,
those joining corporate network must also have the .com attachment. This company
prides itself in their ability to maintain privacy and niche communities and have been
instrumental in learning institutions.

28

Golder et. al. (2007) examined an anonymized dataset consisting of 362

million messages exchanged by over four million Facebook users for insight into
Friending and messaging activities. Lampe, Ellison et. al. (2007) explored the
relationship between profile elements and number of Facebook friends, finding that
profile fields that reduce transaction costs and are harder to falsify are most likely to
be associated with larger number of friendship links.

Ellison et. al. (2007) suggests that Facebook is used to maintain existing
offline relationships or solidify offline connections, as opposed to meeting new
people. These relationships may be weak ties, but typically there is some common
offline element among individuals who friend one another, such as a shared class at
school.

Lampe et. al. (2006) found that Facebook users engage in "searching" for
people with whom they have an offline connection more than they "browse" for
complete strangers to meet. Likewise, Pew research found that 91% of U.S. teens who
use Social networking sites do so to connect with friends (Lenhart& Madden, 2007).

Dwyer, Hiltz and Passerini (2007) explain that Facebook beat MySpace,
precisely for its better capacity to deal with privacy. Researchers agree that the most
serious crisis faced by social networks have been related to privacy and personal data
protection. MySpaces audience decrease and Friendsters decline have been related
to this by scientific literature.

29

According to Safko (2010) in his study he found that two of the most influential
social networking sites are Facebook and Twitter. Facebook is by far the most
popular and widely used social network.

Some statistics about Facebook are as follows:

More than 35 million users update their status each day.

More than 3 billion photos are uploaded each month.

More than 5 billion pieces of content including blog posts, news, web
links, notes, photos, and so on, are shared each week.

More than 3.5 million events are created each month.

According to Hoffman (2008) in 2005, the company purchased the domain

name Facebook.com and dropped the from its name. By the spring of 2005,
Facebook was more popular than ever. Zuckerberg appointed Parker president of the
company, hoping that Parkers Silicon Valley connections would help him raise
investment money for Facebook. However, Parker stayed with the company for less
than a year. By that time, Facebook no longer needed Parkers connections in order to
attract potential investors. Facebook had already attracted investment dollars. In
spring of 2005, one venture capital firm invested $12.7 million in Facebook. By the
end of 2005, Facebook had more than 5.5 million active users. The site had gone
beyond college users, expanding to include high school and international school

30

students. Features such as user photo albums had been added. During 2006,
Facebook expanded again to include professional networks, now reaching 12 million
active users. Advertising banners brought increased revenue, and as more investment
money flowed in, Zuckerberg found himself one of the wealthiest 21-year-olds in the
world. As of 2010, he had never returned to Harvard to complete his education.

Twitter
Akshay et. al. (2007) In their study, they present their observations of the
microblogging phenomena by studying the topological and geographical properties of
Twitters social network. The dataset used in their study were created by monitoring
the public timeline for a period of two months starting from April 01, 2007 to May 30,
2007. A set of recent updates were fetched once every 30 seconds. Hence, they
observed that there are a total of 1,348,543 posts from 76,177 distinct users in their
collection.

Haewoon et. al. (2010) study the topological characteristics of Twitter and its
power as a new medium of information sharing. In their study they have crawled the
entire Twitter site and obtained 41.7 million user profiles, 1.47 billion social relations,
4,262 trending topics, and 106 million tweets. In twitter follower - following topology
analysis have found a non-power-law follower distribution, a short effective diameter,
and low reciprocity, which all mark a deviation from known characteristics of human
social networks. In order to identify influentials on Twitter, They have ranked users

31

by the number of followers and by PageRank and found two rankings to be similar.
Ranking by retweets differs from the previous two rankings, indicating a gap in
influence inferred from the number of followers and that from the popularity of ones
tweets. They have analyzed the tweets of top trending topics and reported on their
temporal behavior and user participation. They have classified the trending topics
based on the active period and the tweets and show that the majority (over 85%) of
topics are headline news or persistent news in nature. A closer look at retweets reveals
that any retweeted tweet is to reach an average of 1,000 users no matter what the
number of followers is of the original tweet. Once retweeted, a tweet gets retweeted
almost instantly on next hops, signifying fast diffusion of information after the 1st
retweet.

Instagram
Rainie et. al. (2012) define that Instagram is a mobile photo (and video)
capturing and sharing service, has quickly emerged as a new medium in spotlight in
the recent years. It provides users an instantaneous way to capture and share their life
moments with friends through a series of (filter manipulated) pictures and videos.
Since its launch in October 2010, it has attracted more than 150 million active users,
with an average of 55 million photos uploaded by users per day, and more than 16
billion photos shared so far (Instagram 2013). The extraordinary success of Instagram
corroborates the recent Pew report which states that photos and videos have become
the key social currencies online.

32

Instagram (2011) consider that every moment counts. Or at least so it seems

through the eyes of social media users who take countless pictures of everything
imaginable, instantly sharing them over the Internet. Instagram, the recent fad in
mobile photo sharing applications, provides exactly that: a way to snap photos, tweak
their appearance, and share them on various social networks with friends, family and
complete strangers. Although only launched in October 2010, its 15 million users
have already taken more than 400 million pictures from all over the globe.

Naaman et. al. (2010) and Ellison, et al. (2007) argued that despite its
popularity, to date, little research has been focused on Instagram. Fundamental and
critical questions such as: What types of photos and videos do people usually post on
Instagram?, What are the differences between users in terms of the their posted
photos?. And how are these differences between userss photos related to other user
characteristics, such as the number of followers? remain openand untouched. They
advocate that Instagram deserves attention from the research community that is
comparable to the attention given to Twitter and other social media platforms. Having
a deep understanding of Instagram is important because it will help us gain deep
insights about social, cultural and environmental issues about peoples activities
(through the lens of their photos). After all, a picture is worth a thousand words (in
contrast, Twitter is mainly a text-based communication platform).

33

CHAPTER 6

6.1 KEY PEOPLE INVOLVED WITH SNS

For many, social networking sites could be just a virtual place to express your
voice or have some fun. For the enterprising ones, social networking sites could mean
serious business. The following table shows the different types of social networking
sites according to their launched date and the people involved on a particular social
networking sites.

Types of SNS

Year

Authority

Sixdegree.com

1997

Andrew Weinreich

AsianAvenue, BlackPlanet
and LiveJournal

1999

Benjamin Sun, Peter Chen, Omar Wasow

and Brad Fitzpatrick

Migente

2000

Community Connect Inc.

Cyworld and Ryze

2001

Hagul, SK Communication and Adrian Scott

Friendster

2002

Jordan Oniel Magilaya

LinkedIn, MySpace and hi5

2003

Specific Media LLC, Chris DeWolfe & Tom

Anderson, Akash Garg and Ramu

Flickr
and
(Harvard only)

2004

Ludi Corp and Mark Zukerberg

YouTube

2005

Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim

Twitter

2006

Evan Williams, Noah Glass, Jack Dorsey

and Biz Stone

Facebook (Everyone)

2007

Mark Zukerberg

Instagram

2010

Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger

Facebook

Table 1: Timeline of the launch dates of many major SNS and the people
involved on a particular SNS

34

The following people were involved in the development of some theworlds major
social networking sites:

SixDegrees.com
According to Plymale (2012) Six Degrees was founded by financial analyst
and legal professional Andrew Weinreich, and was launched in 1997. Over the past
decade or so, Weinreich has been working on other social media ventures. He is
currently the CEO of the dating site MeetMoi.com. He is also the chairman of Xtify,
a push notification service. Weinreich has also been instrumental in other Internet
ventures, creating Joltage, a business dedicated to building a network of global WiFi
networks. These are just a few of the social media related projects Weinreich has
been involved in. Although people usually think of the name Zuckerberg when they
think of the forefathers of social media, there are others that paved the way for sites
like Facebook. Weinreich is one of these forward thinkers that helped grow ideas and
trends in social media.

Andrew Weinreich is currently the CEO of mobile dating service MeetMoi

and the Chairman of Xtify. He was the founder of sixdegrees.com, Joltage, and I
Stand For, and is the lead author of the seminal and first patent in social networking.

Since 1995, Weinreich has focused on the search for paradigm shifting
ventures in new industries. The idea for sixdegrees.com - widely acknowledged as the
Internets first social network, was driven by Weinreichs goal of facilitating
meetings between people you dont know through the people you do know. The
company was ultimately sold to YouthStream Media Networks in December 2000.

35

In July 2001, Weinreich founded Joltage, an infrastructure services business

devoted to building out a global network of WiFi hotspots. In December 2003,
Weinreich founded I Stand For, Inc., which he sold in February 2006. I stand for
offered a complete technology solution to political campaigns, including the
construction of online communities; online fundraising tools; a full content
management system and a customer relationship management system.

In February 2006, Weinreich started meetMoi, the first location-based mobile

dating startup in the United States. The company charges a monthly subscription fee
appended to a users cellular phone bill. In 2008, Weinreich spun off the persistent
tracking technologies of meetMoi into a separate company called Xtify. Xtify is the
first platform for geo-targeted mobile messaging.

Livejournal
Nicole (2007) report that Brad Fitzpatrick, founder of LiveJournal and a chief
architect of Six Apart, is leaving the company for good. Since selling his company,
Danga Interactive, to Six Apart two years ago, Fitzpatrick is reportedly bored with his
team members and misses the excitement of a fast-paced, innovative environment.
Some sources have indicated that Fitzpatrick will be moving over to Google. While
the reports have yet to be confirmed, the troubles that Six Apart is already facing will
only be exemplified with Fitzpatrick's departure. One of the company's most recent
woes happened earlier this summer when LiveJournal faced quite a backlash after the
deletion of several journals with sex-themed groups.

36

Hi5
Comscore (2007) RamuYalamanchi studied computer science at University of
Illinois; RamuYalamanchi graduated in 1996, and was present at the university when
it developed the pioneering Mosiac web browser. The first company that
RamuYalamanchi worked for was ClickOver; which gave him valuable insight into
how to run and organize a company.

RamuYalamanchi created a dating website in 2002, and was then inspired to

create Hi5 when Friendster was launched in 2002. RamuYalamanchi states it took Hi5
six months, from it's launch date, to attract one million users. The majority of these
users were located outside of the U.S., and Hi5 continued to focus on international
markets. From 2003-2008, RamuYalamanchi stated that the company received over
$35 million in funding; which was used to expand the business.

MySpace
CNNMoney.com (2010) found that Chris DeWolfe was born in December
1965 and grew up in Portland, Oregon. Both of his parents were teachers. His father,
Fred DeWolfe, was a historian who wrote several books about Portland history. His
mother, Brigitte, taught German at a local college. Chris and his brother, Andrew,
attended public schools in Portland. As a high school student, Chris was a varsity
player in both basketball and tennis and competed in the state tennis championships
along with his brother. Chris graduated from high school in 1984. Although his
parents hoped he might follow in their footsteps and become a teacher, Chris was not

37

interested. Instead, he majored in finance at the University of Washington in Seattle.

After graduating in 1988, Chris drifted around the San Francisco Bayarea. Pressured
by his family to come up with a plan for his life, he enrolled in the University of
Southern Californias (USC) Marshall School of Business to pursue a masters in
business administration.
Maney (2010) noted that DeWolfe said in one class, I did a paperfor a
company I called SiteGeist. The whole idea was to have Internet communities in
every city, where people could connect around shared interestswhether nightlife or
shopping or entertainmentand to have all the communication tools that went along
with that, including email and instant messaging. Maney said that not only did
DeWolfe earn a good grade on his paper, but later on he would hire his professor for
the class, Paul Bricault, to promote MySpace.

According to Carmichael (2010) in 2000, Anderson was walking in his

neighborhood when he picked up a flyer offering $20 to anyone who answered the ad.
In debt and needing money for a planned trip to Singapore, Anderson answered the ad
and found himself in a focus group interview, testing products for XDrive. The
interviewer was impressed with Anderson and hired him as a copywriter. Anderson
intended to keep the job for just a few weeks to make some quick money. But it was
not long before he got DeWolfes attention. When testing a new product, Anderson
was able to explain concisely why the new product was not working from a users
perspective. DeWolfe was so impressed with Anderson that he offered him a job in
marketing at XDrive. Anderson had landed his first corporate job at XDrive. But more

38

importantly, his relationship with DeWolfe would lead him to success and fame as a
cofounder of one of the worlds biggest social networking sites.

According to Pace (2006) DeWolfe and Anderson called their new site
MySpace, making use of the domain name DeWolfe had purchased years before from
an online storage company. On August 15, 2003, MySpace was launched. DeWolfe
sent an e-mail to his boss at e-Universe that afternoon, saying, We launched
MySpace. Its sort of buggy, but the best way to find the bugs is to let people use it
and get feedback (Angwin, 2009). The groundbreaking Web site was officially up
and running.

Facebook
Hoffman (2008) explains that Mark Zuckerberg was born in White Plains,
New York, on May 14, 1984, the son of a dentist, Edward, and a psychiatrist, Karen.
Mark received his first computer when he was in middle school and started
developing computer programs for gaming and communication. He attended Ardsley
High School in New York before moving to Phillips Exeter Academy, a private
preparatory school in Exeter, New Hampshire. There, Zuckerberg created several
computer programs, including one that helped workers in his fathers office
communicate. Zuckerberg enjoyed such projects. He and his roommate, Adam
DAngelo, even wrote the software for an MP3 player that could track its users
listening habits and then create a digital music library based on those preferences.
This program, called Synapse, was posted on the Web as a free download. Several

39

companies, including AOL, became interested in the program. They approached

Zuckerberg, but he refused to sell it.

Stone (2009) state that in 2008, Forbes magazine listed Zuckerberg as a

member of its billionaires club. His worth was estimated at $1.5 billion, which made
him the youngest billionaire on the planet at that time. In October 2007, after a public
bidding war with Google, Microsoft Corporation had made a $240 million investment
in Facebook, giving Microsoft a 1.6 percent share in it. At that time, Facebook was
valued at $15 billion, which many analysts considered an unrealistic figure for a
company that had made only $150 million in revenues in 2006. Hoffman (2008)
commented: On the surface it seems insane. Why would Microsoft pay so much for
such a small piece of a company? But whether it was $1 billion or $15 billion, it
doesnt matter. By making it $15 billion, it assures that no one would come near it.
The only one who could buy it now is Microsoft.

According to an article in the Harvard Crimson newspaper written by Kaplan

(2003): Zuckerberg said that he was aware of the shortcomings of his site, and that he
had not intended it to be seen by such a large number of students. . . . I wanted some
more time to think about whether or not this was really appropriate to release to the
Harvard community. After taking it down, Zuckerberg decided that criticism of the
site was too strong to re-post it.

40

Twitter
According to Sarno (2009) Jack Dorsey, creator of Twitter, was born on
November 19, 1976. He grew up in St. Louis, Missouri. As a teenager, he became
interested in dispatch routing, the process by which drivers of delivery trucks,
emergency vehicles, taxicabs, and so on are dispatched, or sent, to various locations.
He liked how communications from the drivers to the dispatcher were stripped down
to the bare essentials: where they were and what they were doing.

At age 14, Dorsey started developing software for a dispatch company in St.
Louis. He attended Bishop Dubourg High School in St. Louis and went on to the
Missouri University of Science and Technology. After graduation, Dorsey went to
New York University. However, in 1995, he dropped out and started work on creating
computer programs for DMS, one of the biggest courier services in the country.
Eventually, he moved to California.

Dorsey started a company in Oakland, California, in 2000 that would dispatch

couriers, taxis, and emergency vehicles via the Internet. Ultimately, his interest in
dispatching led him to the idea that would become Twitter.

Sagolla (2010) admits that at first, not many people understood or used
Twitter. He explained: Very few people understood its value. At that time most
people were still paying per [text messages sent from cell phones], and so wouldnt
[Twitter] run up our bills? Also, how were we supposed to use this thing and who
cares what Im doing? Soon, however, people began warming up to Twitter. A
landmark moment occurred during the 2007 South by Southwest Festival (a film and

41

music festival that takes place every year in Texas), when Twitters creators placed
two large plasma screens in the conferences hallways, streaming only Twitter
messages. Conference attendees began to keep tabs on each other with constant
Twitter messages. Soon everyone was talking about this new messaging service.
Tweets went from 20,000 per day to 60,000.

Levy (2009) found that in 2009, Time magazine listed the three founders of
TwitterJack Dorsey, Biz Stone, and Evan Williamsamong their 100 Most
Influential People in the World. Twitter had taken its place among other social
networking applications as the next big thing. But similar to MySpace and Facebook,
it would experience growing pains. In 2010, Twitter had approximately 15 million
active users. The company had made approximately $25 million in revenue in 2009. It
continued to operate on investment funds, having reportedly turned down an offer
from Facebook to buy Twitter for $500 million. Twitter invited outsidersboth
individuals and companiesto create their own applications and services that would
be featured on the site. Some created new dashboards for Twitter that made it easier
for users to navigate the site. Others made it possible to link tweets with pictures or
videos. Stone said, There may be some 50 people officially working at Twitter, but
its more like 50,000 people work for Twitter, and they all deserve as much credit as
we do.

42

CHAPTER 7

7.1 CONCLUSION
The coming of the internet has made the life of everyone easy and lots of
things can be done in a little amount of time. Communication with people in todays
world can happen virtually without having to meet them in person. Moreover,
communication with our friends, families and love ones staying in different corners of
the world can be made with little amount of money spent. Thanks to the internet
meetings, conferences and even classrooms can be attended virtually and this has
greatly help people who are living in remote areas with under develop airports,
railways and waterways. Social networking sites has made our world a very small
world indeed!.

Over the years, especially in the late twentieth and twenty first centuries,
peoples social lives have been taken over by online social networks. These have
grown rampantly and expeditiously.Social networking sites have definitely taken over
peoples social interactions. The benefits are many but dangers also lurk around. They
have become household names and none can escape their influence whether directly
or indirectly.

43

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