alt Hacker News> Friendster was the first social network
Friendster was not the first social network.
sixdegrees.com had it beat by 5 years.
Replies
1970-01-01 • last Sunday at 11:35 PM
AOL has them beat by another 5. You need to go back to ARPA to find the first one. Social networks are just networks with humans at each end.
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orbital-decay • last Sunday at 11:48 PM
Also LiveJournal, launched in 1999.
It all depends on how you define "social network". We had BBS and forums that operated much like "social networks" in the mid 90s. I don't think being "the first social network" is particularly interesting or noteworthy.