Socialization is the primary means by which human infants begin to acquire the skills necessary to perform as a functioning member of their society, and is the most influential learning processes one can experience.
The first recognizable social networking site was launched in 1997. sixdegrees.com allowed users to create profiles, list their friends and beginning in 1998 even to surf their friends list. Each feature existed before in some form of the other but the sixdegrees.com was the first website to combine it all. classmates.com allowed people to affiliate with their high school or college and surf the network for others who were also affiliated which feature is now a days listed in facebook.com as well. But users couldn't create profiles in classmates.com at that time.
sixdegrees.com was based on the concept of the human web algorithm of six degrees of separation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_degrees_of_separation.
Most of the social networking websites as we know them today are based on the relatively new social networking website named friendster.com which was launched in 2002 causing such sites to become part of mainstream users globally. The company's financial source was mainly through donations and is still able to survive the tides of so many social networking website.
The soon to launch other website was myspace.com which was launched somewhere in mid 2003 and myspace became the most poplular networking site in june 2006. The company doesn't show statistics for revenue but generates its revenue from advertising and is very efficient in behavourial targeting. Myspace is one of the coolest networking sites one could come across and had features like music as well in the past.
and the rest to follow were the giants orkut.., facebook,.. twitter and what not...
P.S :- Anyone who has seen the movie THE SOCIAL NETWORK i would like to inform them the facebook's basic theme was copied from myspace !
