SixDegrees – Social Networking in its Infancy

When most of us think of online social networking, we most likely think of Facebook. Facebook is by far the most popular social networking site we have today with 500 million Facebook users.

However, Mark Zuckerberg was definitely not the first person to have created a social network, he was just the first to succeed in the way that he did.

In truth, one of the first social networks to really take off was called Sixdegrees.com.

It was founded by Andrew Weinreich, a well-known Internet businessman and executive. Weinreich began his career working as a financial analyst, and shortly after, he went back to school to study law. He worked as a professional lawyer for 2 years. It was during this time that he came up with the concept of an online social network that made the process of “meeting people you don’t know through people you do know” more efficient.

It was in 1997 that he launched Sixdegrees. At its peak, the site had 3.5 million users and 100 employees. Weinreich later sold the site to Youthstream Media Networks in December 2000 for $125 million. Weinreich is currently the CEO of meetMoi, a location-based mobile dating service, as well as the president of Xtify, a geo-targeted mobile messaging platform.

Sixdegrees was based on the type of web social network of contacts. Weinreich was inspired by the theory that every person in the world is connected to every other person by no more than six steps, also known as the “six degrees of separation” concept. It was also the first social networking site to combine features found on other dating sites and community sites into one. Users could create personal profiles, set up friend lists, and browse friend lists belonging to other users within their network. They could message each other, join networks, and send invitations to family and friends to become Sixdegrees members.

As I write this now in 2010, none of this seems all that impressive. However, in 1997, no other site offered a combination of these features.

Unfortunately, Sixdegrees didn’t last long and certainly didn’t capitalize on the popularity or support that a site like Facebook has today. There were a number of reasons that contributed to the failure of this social network:

1) At that time, web technology had not yet developed to the point where it was capable of supporting the functions necessary for this type of application to be successful;

2) Despite their 3,500,000 registered users, Sixdegrees couldn’t accumulate enough users before they ran out of money;

3) The features available to Sixdegrees users were not as engaging as they could have been and failed to keep their users coming back;

4) Factors outside the company’s control had a detrimental effect on its ability to profit from online advertising. These events included a post-April 2000 recession, as well as 9/11, and;

5) The online advertising industry was not mature enough to provide enough online advertisers to support their business model.

Factors 4 and 5 probably contributed the most to its downfall, however, Sixdegrees ushered in a new era in online communication and networking. Despite its short-lived success, it paved the way for the likes of Facebook, LinkedIn, and many more.

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