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



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.
Posted by: Chris | February 22, 2008 at 12:18 PM
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
Posted by: Joe Suh | February 22, 2008 at 12:51 PM
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.
Posted by: sqjtaipei | March 02, 2008 at 09:57 PM