Timeline: social networking sites creating a Buzz

In the week that Google launches new social networking site ‘Google Buzz’, we take a look at social networking sites through the years.

Product manager Todd Jackson at Google Buzz launch

1997: Six-degrees.com was the first socal networking site to hit the online world founded by Andrew Weinreich from New York. Although only lasting until 2001, it was the first of its kind and at its peak reached 100,000 registered members.

1999: Brad Fitzpatrick launched online journal and social networking site ‘Livejournal’ in April. With features such as a friends list, user information and photos Livejournal became extremely popular, particularly in America.

2002: Australian computer programmers Jonathon Abrams and Cris Emmanuel discovered Friendster. Launched in March 2002 in 10 different languages then a further 11 languages in 2007, over 70% of the world’s internet users are able to use the social networking site.

2003: Myspace was set up in August by eUniverse employees when they felt Friendster was not satisfactory anymore. Myspace was created with more features, server capacity and technical expertise and then bought for $580 million in June 2005 by Rupert Murdoch’s company Fox Broadcasting.

2004: Facebook was founded in February by student Mark Zuckerberg, set up originally as a site for Harvard students. With currently over 400 million members worldwide which is forever growing, Facebook could now be considered the most popular and successful networking site ever. Based on monthly users, it internationally overtook Myspace in April 2008. With a live news feed and more applications being added everyday, Facebook is still currently free to users through the use of advertising despite rumours of a monthly fee.

2005: Bebo was first launched from the living room of married couple Michael and Xochi Birch. Inspired by Friendster, Mr Birch noted the flaws and began coding his own more updated social networking site. Although it grew to have 40 million users, it was overtaken by the overwhelming rise of new site Facebook.

2010: This week search engine site Google launched the newest social networking site Google Buzz. At the launch this week, product manager Todd Jackson went through the new features this social networking site provides.