facebook also caught the social internet first wave.. humanity never had a global website to 'exist' .. facebook came, everybody thought it would be teh future and wanted to try.
that s not true. many different social networks existed, and many were very close to facebook. there were even blogs etc. Facebook was the only one willing to ruthlessly go after people's contacts lists, and get them to use their real names so even non-internet users would undestand it. After it had picked up exponentially more users it was basically impossible to match for others.
Afaik there was nothing like Facebook. Blogs and even MySpace don't count. They weren't integrated like Facebook (you could interact with people in a lot of ways).
Those were all facebook's competitors and offered mostly the same features. Facebook succeeded because everyone's friends were there. Facebook was not "integrated", it didnt even have a newsfeed when it started
You could add asianavenue who had millions of users. Except friendster and VK I think I toyed with all the others and none felt like Facebook. MySpace was just a blog + ad-hoc musician, LinkedIn was too narrow.
Things that were different:
- stronger crossover into real life (it wasnt a net persona, LinkedIn was real but it was for jobs, you dont live in it)
- sharing personal Prefs
- games with other members
Maybe I missed these on other websites.
PS: I'm not pro FB, but to my best memory it was clearly different from other websites. Hence my original message.
all of them had those, to different degrees. Bebo even had a copy of the facebook platform for games. Arguably myspace, bebo , orkut etc had more customization and the feeling of subcultures. Facebook was a flat big mass. Their success relied on sucking up every possible contact list faster than the rest.
I don't agree with the contact list sucking. If it was bad people would have left pure and simple. Myspace and others were huge mess, just larger blogs, it wasn't different.