Any readers out there old enough to remember Bulletin Board System? Or CompuServe?
What about when ICQ was The Way in which everybody chatted amongst each other? Xanga was there for a minute, wasn’t it?
The long and strange journey through Friendster to Myspace to Facebook to the next heir apparent, Pinterest, has been a labyrinthine trek through a lot of different social networks, some of which you’ve probably even forgotten you registered an account on and some you probably missed altogether.
Well, if you’ve ever felt nostalgic for all those yesterdays spent online chatting with your friends, both IRL and non-IRL, the crew at Citizen Brando put together a fun infographic showing the long and strange trip we’ve taken through social networking sites. The infographic starts all the way back in the 1970s with Bulletin Board System, which was basically the internet before there was an Internet. Jumping on from there, you get to see all of the other sites, the rise-and-falls of many Next Big Things, and even some open-ended conclusions about what will emerge as our next fascination in social networking (I’d never even heard of GetLunched.com before, and it appears to either be in Beta so you’d end up on a waiting list if you sign up today).
Check out below to see what sites you missed, what sites you’re glad are gone, and what ones you wish had stuck around.
Click here to see a larger version.