A few years ago, my co-worker Ryan and I were discussing fun business ideas over a sushi lunch. What if there were a way to leverage the connections of our first-degree relationships, for either business or personal reasons? Maybe you could find a new customer, maybe a new girlfriend – and because you could see how you were connected to someone, there wouldn’t be an issue of trusting random people who you met over the Internet.
That conversation took place in January of 2003. In March, someone tipped me off to friendster. D’oh – like so many good ideas, someone had executed quicker than us on this one.
Ah well, they did a great job with it. I’ve been using friendster for years, and it is quite addictive. There are now other social networking sites, notably:
– MySpace: I don’t know too much about this one, but it seems to be popular with high school students
– thefacebook.com: It seems to have surpassed friendster in popularity with college students, because you need to have a valid college email address to access it.
– LinkedIn: The business version of social networking. I’ve been on it for months but only recently started exploring its features and filling out more detailed profile information.
I’m curious if you’re a member of any of these sites and if you’ve made any worthwhile connections from them.
