All three group member’s first experience with Social Networking Sites was the popular MySpace, along with MSN Messenger, as teenagers. MySpace was the first site which attracted teenagers on a broad level and the need to ‘keep up’ with social peers caused MySpace to take off. None of the group members use MySpace anymore bit instead chose to move to Facebook when the site became widely popular. All three group members also integrate their social media experience over a number of sites, including tumblr, youtube, twitter and instagram just to name a few.
Over the years Social Networking Sites have adapted to user’s changing needs. Original SNS were set up with the idea of dating, such as Match.com and Six Degrees, later SNS were set up to have both broader and more specialised purposes. Nabster was a music downloading site. Social sites such as MySpace and Facebook became about keeping in contact with friends. Flickr is for photographers, Vine is for video makers, linkedin is for professionals and the list goes on.
The earliest SNS sites such as Sixdegrees were often unable to function simply as they weren’t able to keep up with the technical demands of running such a heavily trafficked site but since the evolution of the internet Social Networking Sites now tend to fail when they are unable to keep up or adapt to the changing need’s of the user. Despite the fact that MySpace is not accessed as often as the equivalent site Facebook, MySpace’s ability to recognise that their site was being used by bands, meant that they were able to adapt and create MySpace Music which has helped the site not only survive as a social network by thrive in a particular area.
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