Small online social networking services began to appear in 1997, but social networking did not begin to gain significant momentum until 2002 with the arrival of Friendster. Around a year later, MySpace and LinkedIn appeared. In 2004, the reigning champion of social networking, Facebook, went live, and Twitter arrived in 2006. Google+, the most recent social networking service, was opened to the general public just last year. The rapid growth in availability of social networking services indicates they will be around for quite some time in the future, although they will likely morph considerably, as they have already have in their short history.
Some consider social networking services as “toys” meant only for young people to exchange their personal information, share embarrassing photographs, and get to know each other, but this belief is misplaced. Social networking services are used by vast numbers of people worldwide. Facebook reportedly has over 800 million active users worldwide, 200 million of which were added just in the past year.1 Twitter had more than 178 million unique visitors in February 2012 alone.2 In its first year, Google+ has already attracted over 100 million active users.3 Social networking services are used by all age groups and races, and use of these services is fairly evenly split between women and men.4
