Social Networking Timeline - when did you jump in?

I'm working on a presentation for social networking, and I created this timeline of popular sites launching. 

Thanks to the researchers behind this paper - I used some of the data they were collecting for it from here.

So when and where did you create your first social networking profile?  Did you jump on the bandwagon after 2006 when they hit the mainstream?

Most of my geek Silicon Valley friends were on Friendster by 2003, LinkedIn by 2004, and Myspace by 2005.  I remember seeing a church create a profile on Friendster in the early days and thought that was pretty innovative.  I sent them a friend request, but I think the profile got deleted by Friendster.  (they were infamous for deleting profiles of non-individuals - "No, you cannot be friends with Burning Man!")

4 years later, we're still trying to figure out how a church can best leverage these social networks to be more than just a friend.

Joe Suh from MyChurch.org

Update: found this more detailed timeline from Danah Boyd's paper

Comments

[Chris]

My official answer is May 2007 with Facebook. That's when I started to "use" social networking.

I joined Friendster in the beginning, but other than registering, I didn't pursue it. Didn't feel it was relevant to my life.

I avoided MySpace as much as possible, wrong demographic. I'm late 30s. Met some friends who were in it, lookrf at it closely in late 2006 and ran away screaming. Too noisy, visually, too much sex and too many ads.

[Joe Suh]

That's a good clarification point - discovery versus activity.

Although I found and joined LinkedIn and Myspace pretty early on (2003), I didn't really "use" them. Didn't actively use LinkedIn since no one else I knew was on it at the time. And didn't actively use Myspace for the same reason as Chris

[sqjtaipei]

I was on sixdegrees and classmates WAY BACK... mid 90s... then out of it all for a while and jumped back in with Last.fm back when it was still called something else... audioscrobbler?
I started with Facebook a few months ago.
Interesting project... good luck.

[Barefootmeg]

I started "social networking" with Velocity back in '97? '98? Velocity became CommunityZero which then shut itself up from public use to become a private business application.

I'd say my next leap into the fray was through Orkut in 2003. (Although I suppose I could mention Blogger as well. Not so much social back then, but getting more so now.)

In 2004, I joined Multiply.com which I loved! I've pretty much used Multiply as my top social networking site ever since.

I joined Facebook in 2006 but didn't think much of it until friends started joining around 2008. Still don't think a whole lot of it, but at least now I'm reconnected with a lot of people that I still don't stay in touch with, but at least now I know they're there when I'm not communicating with them.

I joined Twitter in 2006 also. Didn't think much of that one either until the creation of Tweetdeck. In my opinion Twitter isn't much of anything, but the applications you can use on it make it rock.