History of Social Networking Website Failures

The first social networks -- online properties where people could chat and share information -- were the bullentin board systems, or BBSs, in 1978. And what was one thing that these social network pioneers shared? Web browsers.

In 1993, the first the first web-based social network was released in the form of Geocities. The web property allowed individuals to create their own website, which were organized into one of six "cities". Geocities, which was acquired by Yahoo in 1999 for $2.9 billion, officially shut its doors in 2009.

In 1995, the incipient blog concept TheGlobe.com posted a record $850 million IPO. Three years later, it was worth less than $4 million -- and this was before the Dot-com bubble of 2000. The web property ceased operations in 2008.

In 1997, sixdegrees.com was launched, and by 2001 it was down and out. The website still states it is the "World's Hottest New Social Network".

In 2002, Friendster hit the scene and grew to 3 million users. It hasn't really done much since.

A year later the Friendster clone MySpace was launched and was later acquired by News Corp for $580 million in 2005. At the time it had 16 million users, so that comes to about $36/user. Fast forward 6 years, and it is reported that MySpace only has 18 million active users even though it was one of the top 10 visited websites in 2010.

In 2004 Facebook was launched. By the end of the year it still had less than 1 million users. It would take more than 2 years to reach 10 million users. Today, it is the second most visited website on the web after Google.

By 2005, countless of social networking websites have been introduced including LinkedIn and Classmates.com. However, the combined total users of the top 15 social networking websites don't even come close to the 600 million users on Facebook.

Where do you think we will be in 10 years? Will Facebook still be the largest social networking website? Or will it go the way of MySpace, only to be replaced by another social networking website?