Social Web

Social web has shaped the world into what it is today. It is responsible for the way people interact with each other every day of our lives. It has changed the way we chose to do different daily takes. People have taken granted of social websites and feel as if they can't live without them. We have become so dependent on these sites that some have forgotten that it is all a luxury and not a necessity. The ages that use social websites very between all groups (child, teen, young adult, adult and elderly). Though it is though and once were mostly teens using these sites, many things have changed since the first social website and have attracted the older generations now days. So we will start from the beginning and work our way to today's social webbing.

The first social network website began in 1997. It was called SixDegrees.com. It allowed people to create profiles, find and add their friends, and eventually surf the friends list. Even though the features where available through other websites none where available all in one site to be used all at the same time. The website advertised itself as a way to connect and message others. It did in fact attract millions of users that used it daily. However, in 2000, it closed it service due to the fact it could not become a sustainable business. The founders later said they believed it was too far ahead of its time (A. Weinreich, personal communication, July 11, 2007). There where millions of people on the web, however, not enough had a network of friends to interact with. They say there was not enough to do on the site to keep them interested. The founder of Sixdegree.com was Andrew Weinreich. Even though his first site failed, Weinreich went on to become the CEO of meetmoi.com, a "Web 2.0" mobile dating service. He is also the CO-CEO of many other companies. Now we know a bit about the history of social web, let's look at today's websites.

There are many different social websites out there in today's world. Some of the more popular of today are Facebook.com, Twitter.com, and YouTube.com. There have been many other social sites and still are, like Myspace.com for example, but the three above have really taken it all over and all but put the others out of business.

Facebook started as a site for just college students in February of 2004 by Mark Zuckerburg. It was not his first site he had made however. On October 28th, 2003 he created a site called Facemash. The site used photos from online facebook of nine houses and place two photos side by side and had users chose the hotter one. He had to hack into protected areas of Harvard's computer network and stole dormitory ID images. After the site was forwarded to several campus group list-servers, it was shut down by Harvard administration. He was charged for many violations but they were dropped later on. Later on in the year, Zuckerburg wrote a new code for a website. On the 4th of February 2004, thefacebook.com launched. It was originally restricted to only the students of Harvard, and within months, half the undergrad population was registered. Soon after launch Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, Andrew McCollum, and Chris Hughes joined Zuckerburg and helped promote his site. It eventually went on to be open to all universities in Canada and the United States. Then on September 26th 2006, Facebook opened its site to everyone over 13 with a valid email. Today Facebook is valued at over one hundred and four billion dollars. It has over one billion active users to this day and is growing at 2.04% monthly.

Next we have Twitter. Twitter is an online social networking service and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based messages of up to 140 characters, known as "tweets"(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter). It was first created in March of 2006 by Jack Dorsey who launched it in July of that year. Twitter caught on very fast compared to Facebook. I believe for the fact that it was made public right off the back and the web was more widely used by people then when Facebook was first launched. The very first twitter message was on March 21, 2006 by Dorsey himself, who said, 'just setting up my twttr'. The creator got the word twitter by just simply looking up words and stumbled onto it and said it fit perfectly in for what they needed. Twitter is defined as a short burst of inconsequential information, and chirps from birds. A great mile stone for Twitter was on January 22, 2010 when the first unassisted off-Earth Twitter message was posted from the International Space Station by NASA astronaut T.J. Creamer. Twitter is on track to bet out Facebook very soon. The current record for tweets per second is from the 2011 FIFA world cup between Japan and the U.S.A. at seven thousand one hundred ninety six tweets per second. Then when the legendary Michael Jackson tragically passed, Twitters servers crashed with tweets at one hundred thousand per second that included 'Michael Jackson' in their status. According to sources, Twitter is worth over eight hundred million dollars today and is growing rapidly with no end in sight. Even though Twitter has over five hundred million users, only one hundred and seventy million are active today. Twitters popularity will keep growing and I believe will due to Facebook what Facebook did to Myspace.

Now we move on to YouTube. Properly is one of the most popular of all social websites. Even though it is not the same as Facebook and Twitter in making and profile and having friends or followers that talk back and forth, it still have the same aspect of creating a profile and sharing with others. YouTube was created in February of 2005 as a video sharing website by former PayPal employees. You can upload, view and share different videos with others that use YouTube. The first video was put up by one of the cofounders at the zoo on April 23, 2005, and is still able to be viewed today. By July 2006 the site had over sixty five thousand videos available. Then by May 2010 it had over fourteen billion videos available to view. YouTube reports that over sixty hours of video is posted every minute on the site, three quarters of which comes from outside the