A Short History of Social Networks: Present and Future Trends

This morning I started to write a short note on "realtime search, user sentiment, opinion trending and search trends" and their impact on the future of Information Technology markets, but quickly realized that before addressing those issues, I needed to provide some conceptual support to the many topics covered in my three paragraph note. So I started to write a little intro, which grew into this huge post which prevented me from finishing the original note. This is a first draft, which requires revision and fact checking, it is not based on any kind of research and simply tells the story of social networks as lived by a long time user, manager, developer and enabler of social spaces. There are some conscious omissions, in particular wikis and podcasts, which I plan to include later, as well as support links and references to data and services mentioned. All comments and criticism is welcome, in particular as this was written in one sitting, from 9am to 4pm, with a short break for lunch.

Has the Web ever been not Social?

Some claim that the web has officially gone social, as if it had not been a social environment since its birth. But the truth is that with the recent explosion of Facebook and Twitter and their continuous growth have made it even more social than ever, perhaps beyond value some would say, but I am always of the opinion that the more we do, the better and if we do it together, even better yet.

Ancient Times: Homepages, Mailing Lists and Virtual Communities

In the beginning we had personal "homepages" (remember Geocities?), which no one would visit and which remained quietly without updates for eons once completed. At the same time we had virtual communities, mostly in the form of either mailing lists or on-line forums. People would start topics or ask a question and others would comment.

Read the sections below to follow our evolution, recent history and future trends as digital social networks...