A few days ago, social media giant Facebook announced that
they have now reached a billion active users worldwide, and they celebrated it
with an ad that most of you (if you even bothered taking a look) have seen
while logging in onto your accounts. This record is never before seen in any
social networking site and by far can be considered as Facebook’s most notable
achievements.
But before Facebook had 1 billion users all around the
world, it did start somewhere small and it just grew to the social network site
that we know today under favorable circumstances, effective marketing and
strategizing, and good site architecture.
However, this cannot be said for all social networking sites
that have come and go in the past. In this edition of Tech Tuesdays on TFL, we’ll
take a look back at some of the social networking sites that we Filipinos have
joined in the past, but unfortunately were overpowered by the current leaders
in the social media scene.
Myspace. Founded
in 2003, MySpace was the first social media to hit mainstream in the
Philippines. The site which targeted the so-called generation-Y was considered
as one of the most popular sites of that time, even overtaking Google in 2006
as the most visited website in the United States.
After 2008, as Facebook entered the scene, Myspace started
to experience a decline or users even though it generated a considerable amount
of profit during that year. At present, Myspace is still available online and
you can still sign up to be a member. There are also reports that the site will
be undergoing a major overhaul which aims to keep it at pace with most modern
sites, adopting the UI of a lot of popular sites today like Pinterest and
Stumbleupon.
Yahoo! Groups.
Yahoo! Groups is one of the world’s largest online discussion boards and was
primarily used by college students a few years back for sharing assignments,
projects, lessons and notes from classes. The service was first introduced in
2001 and gained popularity probably until mid-2004 to 2005 just before Facebook’s
boom.
The site is still operational today, but a lot of revisions
have already been made including the removal of certain features such as Group
chat beta and applications.
Hi5. Hi5 was
another one of those social networking sites that arrived almost the same time
as Facebook. The company is based in San Francisco, California and was founded
in 2003 by Ramu Yalamanchi. Hi5 was one of those sites that people tried when
people were still searching for the best social media site to join.
Just like most social sites, hi5 members can create online
profiles and add friends. However, Hi5 was surpassed by Facebook later on after
it introduced playable apps to its users.
Multiply. Multiply
was a social networking service that allowed users to share media such as
photos, videos and blog entries with the user’s network. The site became
popular back in the early part of the past decade by giving users the
flexibility to not only add media to their online profiles but at the same time
provide a way to customize their personal pages with the use of CSS.
Moreover, a lot of the users of this site use Multiply as an
e-commerce site where they can buy and sell products with other members of the
community. Just a few months ago, the site announced that they are going to
focus on e-commerce and in turn will be dropping the social networking aspect of
the website completely.
Apple’s Ping. Ping
was the social networking and recommender system service developed by Apple in
2010. The service came bundled with 10th major release of iTunes and
allowed users to follow artists and see short timely postings by both friends
and artisits.
The social network launched with 1 million members in 23
countries but was immediately considered as a flop due to the lack of
interesting features that it offered to users. Apple officially closed the
service on September 30, 2012 and replaced it in iTunes with Facebook and
Twitter integration.
Friendster.
Before the arrival of Facebook, Friendster was the reigning social media king
in the Philippines. It was also the first social networking site to reach 1
million members. In terms of usability and features, just like any other social
networking site of that time, Friendster offered users the ability to create
their own profile page where they can upload photos, videos, slideshows and
blog entries.
But one of the most prominent feature of the site was the
testimonial. Testimonials or “testi” was a way for users to somehow promote or
leave messages or description to people in their network. During its heyday,
Friendster users would often ask their friends to exchange testimonials.
However, the testimonials were later dwarfed by a feature on
Facebook that went viral to a lot of people – Apps! Apps like Farmville, Pet
Society and Restaurant City brought phenomenal success to Facebook which pushed
people to migrate from Friendster (and other SNS) to Facebook.
So there you have it guys. Did we miss any other social
networking site you have joined in the past? Tell us by leaving a comment
below. Tune in again next week for another edition of Tech Tuesdays on TFL. You
can also find us on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google Plus. For more
Filipino lifestyle stories, you can also subscribe to our blog using this link.
