Social Network Takeover

Social networks have taken over the web... and its just being accepted. At first it was just a way to keep in touch with friends but now its so much more. I sound like I'm promoting social networks, but I'm not.

From a music social network like Last.Fm where you can compare music tastes and find out about gigs to twitter where you can document your every move and stalk celebrities without leaving your home.

To begin the popularity of it it all was Myspace. Founded in August 2003, Myspace brought together connection with friends, listening to music and documenting your life all into one page with one login. This revolutionised the way people surfed the web.

Facebook was then founded in February 2004 as a competitor to Myspace. Facebook stayed a close second in the popularity until early 2009 when it was announced that Facebook was now more popular that Myspace. This could be due to the fact that Facebook changed the way its homepages work, making it so much easier to talk to friends and add applications, with Myspace being terribly hard to understand. Facebook allows companies to create applications making Facebook a lot more multi-website friendly.

This change meant that Myspace music was one of the only things Myspace had up on Facebook. Myspace music makes it very easy to find and listen to the bands you love or new little bands you want to check out.

Bebo is another social network site that is very popular in the UK. Before Bebo used to be very similar to Myspace but seeing the success of Facebook, Bebo is changing, trying to cash in on Facebook's success. Bebo is terribly easy to use, but the downside to that is that Bebo really isn't very exciting or easy to keep up to date with your friends. You could describe Bebo as Facebook's slow little brother.

Twitter is a site that has just recently shot to great success. You could describe twitter as half social network half mini blog. Twitter is very simple, and that's what works for it. You follow people and they write on there page what they are doing or what ever they want to write and you read it to keep up to date. Twitter has now also linked with Facebook, meaning when someone writes what they are doing on Twitter it will also come up as what you are doing on Facebook.

So why the sudden takeover of social networks? I know that i shouldnt be so obbsessed but i cant help but constantly update on Twitter and Facebook. Its the need to be in constant conversation, even though theres a possibility that no one is even reading it. So will social networks continue there take over or will everyone eventually get bored and move on? Only time will tell...

Tommy Wilson