Network nostalgia: These were the forerunners of Instagram and Co.

Network nostalgia
These were the forerunners of Instagram and Co.

When the first social media platforms went online, most users were still looking down the tube.

© Santi S / Shutterstock

Many can no longer imagine a life without Instagram or Facebook. These are the digital predecessors of today's giants.

Those who are only on Facebook these days are considered to be boomers who are left with the pulse of the times. The Zuckerberg empire not only lasted, it was even able to expand with Instagram and WhatsApp. However, this cannot be said of a large number of social networks on the Internet. The "Uh-Oh" from ICQ is barely audible in 2021, the Gruschel button on StudiVZ has now completely disappeared. Some of the social network dinosaurs are still online, but because digital music is played elsewhere today, hardly anyone actively uses it. These are most famous forgotten social networks.

Six Degrees (1997)

When the Internet was still in its infancy for everyone, the so-called small world phenomenon already existed. The concept, which goes back to the Hungarian writer Frigyes Karinthy (1887-1938), states that every person in the world knows each other through at most six corners. The network owes its name to this idea. At its best, the New York-based company had 3.5 million registered members and more than 100 employees. After going offline in 2001, there was a comeback in 2010: Since then Six Degrees has been online again – with the same basic idea that the hype app Clubhouse cleverly uses for its marketing: only those who are invited by members have access to the platform .

Jappy (2001)

The very first social network from Germany was originally launched as a flirt site under the name Singletreffen.net. In 2002 the name was changed to Jappy.tv, the flirting function was retained. The site, which is operated today as Jappy.de, is based in Passau, Bavaria. At its peak in the 2000s, the network had a community of more than one million users and, by 2013, was in the top 20 of the most widely used digital networks in Germany. Jappy is still online, but with a dwindling number of users: in 2019, the company only had around 230,000 active users.

Friendster (2003)

Although Friendster was less relevant for the German market when it was launched in 2003, the network of the Californian company, for the conditions at the time, hit the English-speaking and Asian regions immediately. In a few months more than three million users were registered, by 2008 this number had grown to more than 115 million, the majority of them in Asia. Still, the platform struggled with its competitors MySpace and Facebook – and lost. In 2009 Friendster was sold to the Asian internet giant MOL Global for $ 26.4 million, followed in 2011 by a relaunch as a gaming site that no longer wanted to compete with Facebook, but instead wanted to expand its offer. With manageable success: the Friendster company ceased to exist on July 1, 2018.

MySpace (2003)

MySpace was the first ever social media experience for many people. The very close relationship to music in the first few years and the profiles created by artists and bands were a real user magnet. The network recorded up to a quarter of a million new users at peak times – every day! In 2006, MySpace broke the 100 million mark and established itself as the top dog in social media. However, MySpace also had no chance against the triumphant advance of Facebook. As early as 2008, the Zuckerberg network overtook MySpace, which only knew how to help itself with even more of the advertising that was already present everywhere on the site. The network is still online today, but only around seven million people used the site in 2019.

Localists and StudiVZ (2005)

Because Facebook's dominance in the 2000s was not as cemented as it is today, there was room for regional offers. In Germany, the localists and StudiVZ networks were launched, with the former aimed at the broad mass of the population, while the target group of the latter was schoolchildren and students. Both this approach and the visual design of StudiVZ were strongly reminiscent of the beginnings of Facebook, which initially led to a lawsuit and then to an out-of-court settlement. The localist network was particularly popular in urban areas and had around three and a half million users by 2010 before the decline began. In 2016 the site went offline. StudiVZ, which had 17 million active users at its heyday, was able to last just as long. Keeping them with the offshoots SchülerVZ and MeinVZ did not work: In September 2017, the company had to file for bankruptcy.

Vine (2013)

The short video platform Vine, launched by Twitter, attracted more than 200 million active users to its platform by 2015 and helped create real celebrities. Brittany Furlan (34, "The Dirt"), for example, who was simply known as the "Vine Girl" for many years, has generated billions of views with her comedy videos over the years. In 2016, today's wife of Tommy Lee (58, "Andro") left the platform – despite ten million followers, an astronomical number at the time. So it heralded the decline of Vine, which ceased operations just a year later. In 2017, Twitter offered all Vine content in an archive, but this service has also been offline since 2019.

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