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GENERATION FACEBOOK? – THE HISTORY OF SOCIAL NETWORKS

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 GENERATION FACEBOOK? – THE HISTORY OF SOCIAL
NETWORKS

by
Knut Linke
University of Applied Science Kufstein
Andreas Hofer-Straße 7
6330 Kufstein, Austria
-
c/o Brandenburgerstr. 29
31789 Hameln, Germany
Land line +49/5151/9199405
Mobile +49/176/21100697
knutlinke@gmail.com

Abstract
In this article the history of social networks since the beginning from computer supported communication is
explained to provide information about the development of social networks in the computer network
environment. The interaction via networks like Facebook is not an invention which was done in the current time.
The roots for these networks were set during the 70th in the last century. The article explains the different
development steps since the first networks and has as target to outline the reasons for the different success in the
developing of networks for human interaction.

Introduction
Generation Facebook – a term which is more often used in the current time as before (Taylor 2010,
Frezza 2011, Gray 2011). It is used in the media to explain the existing development in the sector of
computer mediated interaction. This suggests, also for marketing people within the marketing strategy
of social media, that this is the current development in the Internet market and that Facebook has
established the sector of social interaction. With the usage from the term “Generation Facebook” it is
expected that only the current generation of Internet users is using social networks for communication
approaches or that the usage of those networks is now the state of the art in the Internet.
Social networks, or the communication in network in the Internet, similar to networks like the
mentioned Facebook, exist since the time when persons interacted first via computers. In this article
the history from social networks in the Internet is displayed from its beginning in the technical area
before the Internet protocol was introduced for mass communication up to the sharping edge of
Google+.
To receive a better understanding of the complexity from social interaction trough networks on a
computer mediated basement, a description of the first networks before the Internet and the
WorldWideWeb protocol received his success in the society worldwide is displayed. Those
information is followed by the explanation of the first social interaction approaches in the Internet
though social networks. At the end the history and development from the in 2011 state of the art
networks is shown and defined to provide the basement for the understanding of the continues social
network functionality improvement, based on the changing preferences from users and customer
groups. In the description and beside the functions the reach and abilities from the different networks
are determined with the goal to review them in the time context in which the network was available to
the market.
The review in the time context is important to understand the product development process of social
networks as service of an Internet company as an ability for other companies in the sector of product
management or marketing approaches to successful integrate social networks into their social media
approach by taking the customer approaches onto a social network into consideration.

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During the time, the different networks and the included reach, functionality and approaches have
change. For this it is mandatory to understand what those functions which were new to the customer
were and how high the received user base and reach in the Internet network was. Beside the general
development the main networks MySpace, Twitter, Google+ and Facebook for the international market
and the VZ-networks and Xing for the local German market are descript in detail and set in the context
from the development of social networks in the Internet.

Social Networks
Social networks itself exists in its root, the communication between persons, since the usage of
communication via mail, telegraph, phone, or also radio in the context of a feedback channel. In the
electronic environment of the Internet with its technical functions the first interaction happened in this
direction happened when the first email were transferred in the year 1971 (Tomlinson, 2011).
Before the specification and invention from the email, communication happened in the ARPANET
project in an electronic way through Teleprinter. From the modern definition of communication
between computers, this was the first interaction were the result was received on a computer and
computed on them for the direct displaying from information. After the military process for displaying
and sharing information and the invention of email for secure communication in decentralized
networks it took several years until February 16 in the year 1978 when the first bulletin board was
converted onto an electronic base (Gilbertson, 2010). This electronic version of the bulletin board
service (BBS) was available via dial up connection and allowed the user to interact via the board like in
the real world on a bulletin board. This dial up connection via a modem was not part of the Apanet and
introduced new to the users the ability to use a dial up connection for data transfer. Before this technic
was only used for connections between two dedicated people and not as an access point onto an
information sharing platform.
With its technology the BBS set the ideological and technical basement for the in 1979 introduced
Usenet (Hauben, 1990). The Usenet, introduced as alternative for the ARPANET in the US, allowed
communication via the publishing of article in hosted discussion boards including personal messaging
and responding to articles and with this the ability for the discussing of content. The usage of the news
network was able via Newsreaders through dial up connection by the usage of UNIX (Anderson,
1996).
Beside the statically Usenet approach, the BBS extended his reach in Europe by the integration from
the IRC in 1988 as server extension which supported real time chat and received with this in the first
time a huge user base by the integration in a non-centralized application and by the usage of this
application on different servers and services (Stenberg, 2011). The integration from IRC happened
already on the technological basement from the Internet, based on the usage from the TC-Protocol for
the communication. This is important to understand, that the Internet itself were available before the
World Wide Web was introduced. The next step, the invention of the World Wide Web in the way as
we know it currently, was introduced by Tim-Berners Lee on August 6th, 1991 (Berners-Lee, 1991). He
introduced on this date his webserver and browser to the Usenet, approaching the extension in the
displaying of information and the receiving of information through the usage from hyperlinks. This
was the birthday from the Internet in the way as billions of users use it in our days and during the next
years, especially in 1994 and 1995 the first Internet providers were growing up in the Internet business
and set the basics for the usage of the Internet technology in our times (Borders, 2009).
One of those little and local providers, the Beverly Hills Internet company, introduced the GeoCities
network on the WorldWideWeb standard in 1995. GeoCities allowed the introduction of personal
information through a webpage related to virtual cities (Altman, Bohnet, 1995). Customer were able to
create standard webpages and to integrate them into webrings which belonged to content areas, similar
to the BBS approach before but with the ability to change the communication way into the displaying
of information or interests in an expressive usability way of user interaction by supporting HTML and
Scripts. With the introduced connection function in the new ability to use real friend lists (Friendlists)
the success was followed by sixdegress.com in 1997 which was already similar to current social

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networks like Facebook and featured a virtual self-identity and presentation page as also the mentioned
friend list feature and determined with this the basic standards for social network sites (Boyd, Ellison,
2007).
“Sixdegress.com had at its peak 1,000,000 users and around 100 employees, but shut down in 2001”
(Prall, 2010). During those years, also the first social per to per network was available to the Internet
users. The Napster system allowed as first service the direct sharing of personal files through an online
network. With the peer to peer technology the Internet provided the ability to upload files to an
additional person without a dedicated server upload. During his success, Napster gets his peak to the
end of 2001 with around 26.4 million customers using the exchange of content via the Napster network
(Lipsman, 2011). This social media sharing was so successful that the media industry was forced
during the next years to shut down the system and followed users with legal restrictions. With this, the
focus from the industry turned back to social networks. After the success from sixdigress.com
additional social networks started up like Friendster in 2002 and MySpace and Second Live in 2003.
Those framed the basic for a huge amount of additional web 2.0 social networks which were
introduced in the years 2003 up to now (Skloog, 2011). During those years, also the networks which
are currently the market leader in the world and Germany were introduced on the market. Those
networks, and other, not for Germany relevant networks, will be explained in the following sector.

Main Networks
In the world of social networks some networks were able to become global players. Beside the mostly
known Facebook, the focus is on the continuous growing network Twitter and worldwide available
social network from Google, Google+. For the ability to transfer this international business onto the
German market the main German networks are in addition introduced.
Other global players which have not so far a dedicated influence on the society and following niche
markets are LinkedIn and FourSquare (4SQ). For the international approach of connection between
business people, the network LinkedIn was launched in 2003 and has grown up to 100 million users in
2011 (Rao, 2011). In Germany in 2004 the business network Xing was launched and is currently the
market leader for the German speaking area in the Internet. This network will be explained later to
provide more information. In the sector of location based social networks with GPS implementation
FourSquare is currently the international leader with over 10 million users in the world (Foursquare,
2011). Their main feature was implemented in Facebook as a similar function in 2010 but did not allow
the collecting virtual badges like 4SQ does. Beside the global player Facebook, which is the worldwide
leader in the sector from direct connected people, in several areas in the world, local leaders have
established a number one role. In the Russian area, VKontakte was able to collect already 100 million
users (VKontakte, 2011), in China renren.com is leading with over 160 million users (Hille, 2011) and
in Brazil over 50% from the Internet users in the South American country have subscript into
Orkut.com which has a user base of estimated 120 million users (DoubleClick, 2011).
For the German market, some local leaders have developed themselves, which have high influence on
this market. In general in April 2011 over 40.000.000 million of the habitants from Germany were
member in a web based social network. Especially the user group below the age of 30 has a high
acceptance of this technology. In this age section nearly 96% from the relevant people are members
from a network (Bertsch, 2011). In Germany itself several local networks for the providing of
connection between private people are established on the local market. From those networks, which
have not an international approach, wer-kennt-wenn.de and stayfriends.de should be mentioned on the
local area of social networks in Germany, at lasted based on their reach and nice market acceptance.
Stayfriends.de is following a premium approach which is quite unique and means that the users have to
pay for the usage from the network. The subscription to the network is free, but to search in the
network or to receive information about other users, a premium account is needed. In the network in
July 2011 over 12 million users were available (Stayfriends 1, 2011). Stayfriends.de is available on the
German market since 2002 and was acquired 2004 from classmates.com, a US company which has
focused on the network building for former classmates (Stayfriends 2, 2011, Stayfriends 3, 2011).

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From the interaction point of view, this network is very special on the social network market, with the
premium approach and a forcing marketing approach to generate subscriptions. From a heavy user
approach or time spend on the network; stayfriends.de has not a high influence on the social network
market for Germany. The second network, Wer-kennt-wenn.de, was started in 2006 and purchased in
2008 by the RTL group one of the leading, private media company in Europe (Wer kennt Wen, 2007).
It follows a free for use approach. This means no premium account is need for the usage. The wer-
kennt-wenn.de Network had 9.7 million users in July 2011 and ranked with this amount of user in the
top five in Germany in 2011 (Wer kennt Wen, 2011). With the RTL group as media partner (Weigert,
2009) the network is able to publish advertisement onto the RTL group webpages like the leading TV
information pages like rtl.de (Alexa 1, 2011).
For the German market this networks were able to serve a dedicated based on their approach to the
customers like providing a forcing strategy for registration and to pay for premium content to receive
information about other users in the network, which was later adopted from dating platforms. On the
success from the RTL network it can be determined how a well-developed local network can develop if
it is purchased by an area leading Mass Media Company. Beside the mentioned local network, some
networks, also sometimes with a local approach, has a high influence on the social network market in
Germany. For the current main networks in Germany more information will be displayed to provide
more information about the history, abilities and features from the networks which have currently the
highest reach in Germany and mainly in the world. From the main functions each network has the same
core functions as a web based social network, but different extensions, main target groups and business
approaches which allowed them to grow in their business section.

Facebook
As leading social network in the world, based on page views and visitors, the Facebook network has as
over 750 million active users in the mid of July 2011 (Alexa 2, 2011). As conversion medium for users
which search for people in the Internet, personal data from the users can appear in the search result
from search engines. The direct usage and communication in Facebook requires a sign up for the user.
For the amount of active users the definition from Facebook understands the term active for a user had
logged in into the system during the last 30 days. From those active users the half logs in each day. The
users have in average 130 friends and spend all together over 700 billion minutes per month on
Facebook (Facebook 1, 2011).
Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg under the alias “The Facebook” in February 2004
(Facebook 2, 2011). During the first month until September 2006 the system was only available to
students in the states with a valid .edu e-mail address and at the beginning only for students from
Harvard. Related to this startup period, also several sources and court processes were done or are
available that Mr. Zuckerberg had copied his code from co-students and sabotage their projects which
were similar to the actual Facebook to enhance his possibilities to succeed on the market. For this, the
Facebook organization had lost in 2008 as legal issue and was requested to pay 65 million dollars to
former co-students from Mark Zuckerberg (Biermann, 2010). But Facebook didn’t stop during that
time period to develop his system. In November 2007 the network launched Facebook Pages which
allowed companies or institutions to have his own fan page and to sell later on over this page services.
During May 2008 the system introduced Facebook Connect, which allowed external webpages to
integrated functions and features from Facebook itself. With this, registered users from Facebook can
interact with external webpages without the registration on those pages. The functions which are
available are the implementation of comments, the sending of recommendations, the login on complete
webpages or the proceeding of registrations trough in Facebook already available user data.
This also include the in February 2009 introduced “Like it” Button, which is one of the most used
social plugin from Facebook in other pages. During July 2009 a virtual payment method, Facebook
credits, was introduced in Facebook. Following on this success and to avoid later competition with
4SQ and to provide the ability of GPS feature usage, Facebook Places was introduced in August 2010.
Places allows to virtual check-in for a user himself or together with friends at a local base, with a GPS

4
signal. This feature was followed by the introduction of Facebook Questions, a feature which allows
the user to create and provide surveys in the network. The last step in the increasment of Facebook was
done in July 2011 by the order that all internal games or services in Facebook must use Facebook
credits as payment method (Facebookbiz, 2011). Based on the API from Facebook user information
can be received directly and the API allows the direct access onto user information to receive personal
or general information about Facebook. With this, it is possible to receive detailed information about
the user base in Germany. In Germany over 20 million people are active in the Facebook network.
From the members, more males are active as females and the main area in age is between 13 – 44
years, which represent 17.2 million users (Allfacebook, 2011). With this data, Facebook is currently
the leading social network in Germany with the highest amount of users and active page views. From
the marketing point of view and for the usage of social media as marketing instrument, the system
allows the interaction with customers through brand or company pages, called fan pages. Those pages
can be changed in the design in the direction from the company which is setup the fan page. Only the
background color (white), the menu at the top and the font type cannot be changed. Beside fan pages
the system allows to setup context sensitive advertisement in the network. The advertisement can have
the size from a micro bar, a medium rectangle or a half banner. As ways of advertisement sponsored
stories ore Facebook ads can be used. Sponsored stories have always the size from a half banner and
contain the information of a user to his friends that he has like a dedicated page (the company page
which is promoted). Normally this activity is only displayed once in the normal information stream von
Facebook. As promoted story this information is displayed to the friends from the users at the place
from an advertisement with the main information that your friend is now using this app or like this
page/brand. The user which sees the advertisement is also directly asked to participate on the page or
the app. As additional format, Facebook has banner advertisement for pages, events or apps (Facebook
3, 2011). For this format, targeting in the existing user base is possible based on country, age, sex, likes
& interests (which a user has to ad as pages onto his profile), birthday date, gender interests,
relationship status, spoken language, workplace if provided and education. As additional feature, the
advertisement function allows to integrate the existing connection in Facebook into the advertisement
process. It is possible to present the advertisement to all users, only to users which currently not use the
page, app or event, only to users which use it already or to users which use another kind of app, page or
event. With this it is possible to cross-marketing to other brands.
For the future Facebook has announced several changes, also in the usage from the network to catch up
to new players which have another approach in the organizing of users and friends, what allowed a
higher security for personal data.

Google+
Google’s social network Google+ was introduced in June 2011 through an invitation only roll out and
reached already during this beta period a reach of 20 million users to the end of June (Musil 2011). In
August 2011 the network was official launched for the public. To use the service a subscription is
needed. Personal accounts and public shared information can be viewed in the Google Search or with a
direct link from the user.
As special feature Google has introduced the circle approach. Instead of Facebook the Google+ system
allows the adding of friends only into separated lists, called circles. First, the person who is added must
not confirm that a person wants to follow him. In this approach, Google+ follows the approach from
Twitter. As second specialty a person must be added onto circle to be followed. This means that it is
not possible to add a person in general - except you use a circle which you named as general. The
system itself allows on the landing page to separate the information flow to the user based on those
circles. This allows the user to select which information he wants to receive in a special situation.
Beside the function to receive information, Google + also allows to select the receivers of information,
based on the circle selection. The system allows a user to select that the information should be
published into the Internet, to all circles, all circles and circles of the persons in those circles or to

5
selected circles. As additional feature it is also easier to share information as it is in Facebook and to
share comments in the application.
In addition to the “Like it” function from Facebook, this system has the +1 function. This function is
used for internal content and for external content on webpages. The usage is slightly different. In the
system itself the +1 function works like the similar Facebook function and is aggregated as recognition
for the provided content. For external webpages the +1 function does not works like the
recommendation button in Facebook. In Google + it added the selected webpage or content on a
personal bookmark page. This allows the user to add his bookmarks direct in his Google account.
Google also use this information to provide information into the search results to display on this way
how trustful a webpage or information is for the user which receives the search results. The search
results works with those +1 in addition to allow a social search approach. Personal highlight from
friends or +1 from your circles are displayed in an aggregated way in the search results and displayed
on this way directly the support of the Internet users for a page.

Twitter
In the sector of social networks, Twitter was introduced in 2006 under the name Twttr as micro
blogging service to provide a platform to interact with friends and interested people a short way and to
communicate open with the Internet (Patel, 2011). The approach from this service is to provide the
ability to a user to provide short status updates to friends and interested people on a personal page and
to interaction through the network with other users and friends. The personal page from a user with his
messages, the so called Tweed, can be visited without subscription standardized.
For the communication into the network a subscription is needed. The system had with the beginning
of 2011 around 200 million users (Shiels, 2011). The service itself provides the function of searching
in the network for text messages and users, the ability to insert messages as status report with a
limitation on 140 characters, direct messages between users and the function to follow other users. The
function of following allows the users which follows other users to see his posts. The other user did not
to accept the following or to back follow. Twitter as service aggregates all the timelines from the
different users which are gets followed together in main time line. Of course it is possible to see the
timeline from a dedicated user by visiting his profile in detail, but the main function of Twitter is to
present a timeline in which the several friends of the network in react and interact with each other. Like
a normal online chat with a group function like ICQ, MSN or Skype, but in a public and non-grouped
way. The user can merge his own groups or signed up groups into his timeline. This allows the users
also to interact with different groups of friends in his time line in real time without notifying friend
which does not belong to group. For this Twitter allows public direct messages by using the “@”
character and the user name. With this function, the post is only displayed the user to which the
message is mentioned and for users which follows the sending and receiving user.
For the German Twitter market constant information with key performance indicators in the sector of
tweets (messages) and active users is available. The amount of tweets in the German language in
March 2011 was around 16.7 million from around 480.000 active users with the setting of German as
their language. An active user is understood as a user how as send out for messages during the time
period of a month (Pfeiffer, 2011). With this number in active users, the system is still growing (+4,6%
since January 2011 and +74,5% since August 2010). Regarding the usage of the system itself it must
be also noticed that around 25% of the current active accounts are new accounts. This means that the
usage of Twitter changed based events in time and the in times with a high need for interaction and
exchange. Beside the activeness of a user, also the amount of followers is an often used indicator.
Followers as indicators are used to display how the interaction between users happens and if it
happens. With followers it can be expected that the content which is provided by the user is valuable
and the person interacts with the networks or provides active content into the network. Only 75% of the
users have more as 40 followers, 50% of the users have more as 108 followers. To get new followers is
still a quite hard thing in the network and one of the entry barriers for new users, which results partly in
the passive consumption of information by reading without providing. Comparing to this, the average

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number of friends on Facebook for German users were in the year 2010 57 friends (out of a user group
of N=1000) (Anweiler, Wieder, 2011 p. 13). This shows that if a user is able to get into the network
and interacts on the topics which belong to the other user, the user receives followers in Twitter.

VZ-Network
The VZ-Network provides for the German speaking countries a service similar as the first version of
Facebook und was first published to the public during October 2005 for the German speaking market.
In the network in the first step a social network for students, based on the success from Facebook was
launched and supported by viral marketing campaigns on campuses. After the success from the
distinguish behavior approach from the network an additional network was launched for non-students
and followed later on by a successful network for pupils and persons below eighteen.
In the different brands from the VZ-Network in July 2011 over 17 million German speaking people
were registered (StudiVZ 1, 2011) with an active amount of more as 11.6 million unique users,
(StudiVZ 2, 2011). In the starting period, the network was first for students only and was rolled out in
September 2006 in other European countries like Poland, France, Italy and Spain (Schmitz, 2007).
During 2007 the network was acquired by the publishing company Holtzbrink. After this the
international activities were shut down to the end of January 2009, based on the strong competition by
Facebook and the more or less typical German user base (Frickel, 2008). As mentioned in the network
several brands are used. Beside the main network for students a special brand for pupils with a target
group below 18 and a general network is available. Members from the student and the normal network
can interact between each other if agreed. An interaction between the general or student network and
the pupil network is not possible. From the functional point of view, the VZ networks offer in all three
brands the same technology. The user can add friends to a friend list, post message on the personal way
of a user, group users, send internal messages, publish pictures into the network and tagging of friends
on those photos. During the beginning period of the network, the first network was several times under
the investigation from legal entities and Facebook, based on the situation that the source code from
Studivz.de contained parts which exists in the similar version in Facebook. This normally happened
only, if a page is downloaded and then copied, which means that at the beginning the first network was
a direct copy from Facebook. Also a chat client is provided to the community, but broken since several
months, like also the internal messaging system. This displays the current behavior in the network that
it seems that the system itself will not be bug fixed anymore. Against Facebook, the VZ network has
lost a lot of users. In the first quarter from 2011 only 10.8 million users were active in the network,
which is around 60% from the available user base (StudiVZ 3, 2011).
Beside the marketing approach from Facebook, by providing user sensitive ad formats, the VZ
networks, also offer traditional e-commerce marketing possibilities and typical branding and marketing
strategies for a local operating social network.
For advertisement partners the VZ network allows the complete rebranding from their web pages for
marketing purpose including color change and the implementation from skyscrapers and mega banners.
In addition partners can also create special groups and badges for the users. Normally companies are
not allowed to create business related groups in the network; this is only available to paying
companies. Like the plugins from Facebook, this network allows external developers and companies to
implement their applications into the VZ network. Each application which is used by a user inside the
VZ networks is displayed on his personal page at a prominent place, instead of the placement in
Facebook, where the used applications are not directly displayed on the personal page. Instead the VZ
networks did not allow posting messages on the personal page or on the status field in the VZ network
and makes the usage from internal applications more personal as the usage from applications in
Facebook where the receiving of reach is not only limited by apps tough the sending of invitations.
In general the VZ network had the internal issue of bug fixing issues and that they missed a more
communication supporting behavior. With their dedicated personal usage behavior the system runs
currently into a loss of reach onto more open networks.

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Xing
As introduced at the beginning of this article, Xing has for Germany the same business approach as
LinkedIn for the US and world market. This business social network was founded first in 2003 in
Germany as Open BC and had a complete different usability approach as LinkedIn, but the same target
group. For this, the term BC was used as shortage for Business Club. This also defined the target group
of the company. Similar to the US page Linked In, which is currently the biggest website in the sector
of business related social networks with over 100 million users and over 1.984 million page
impressions (Quantcast, 2011). In 2006 OpenBC changed his name to Xing (Tiedge, 2006) to receive a
higher acceptance on the global web market, especially in the Asian speaking country. In the current
time, Xing focus an job related communication and interaction. With over 10.8 million customers, 759
thousand premium customers and over 476 million page impressions Xing is the hugest community in
this sector in Germany and central Europe (Xing, 2011). Xing is successful in this market by
supporting a freemium approach by providing certain features to all users and selected features to
premium users, which can work with those features more efficient based on their personal and
professional background.
Xing as network itself is available in over 16 languages and provides in the network the ability to
exchange knowledge in over 45.000 groups and supports the community by providing the functions to
organize offline events for and from the community. As company Xing employs in June 2011 over 380
co-workers. The network itself requires a registration from the user to participate active in the online
network. A user can decide if his information should be displayed in search engines. On this way the
user can use the displaying of this personal and business information also in direct usage in his
webpage or as entry page for contacts through links are the mentioned search engines. After a
registration the user can insert private information related to the sector of education, current and former
employers and interests. Besides the providing of personal information, which helps the user in the
business network to connect with other persons, a user can join groups and events to participate active
in the network. As also the community allows the search for other persons in the community and
adding of those people to the personal network. As mentioned other as LinkedIn the network Xing
offers a premium service for his customers. This includes a special badge to display that the user has a
premium account, the ability to see which users have visit the profile from the user itself and a better
search engine in the network. Similar to Facebook Xing offered the ability to company to present them
in the network.
For the upcoming future it will get interested for this network, with his roots in the German market, by
facing the ability from Facebook to integrate business related personal history also in the Facebook
network as also the upcoming expansion behavior from LinkedIn which is working on the catch up for
the German market.

Conclusion
In the sector of social network pages several brands are currently on the market and where on the
market in the past of the Internet and before. In the current time the reach of social network has
received a status in the society, which brings the approach of social networking in center of online
marketing and in the focus of the society and media in general. The history of the different networks
and the development from the beginning of communication in computer supported networks via e-mail
and BBS to the current social network pages which are the state of the art, displays that this sector in
business has changed rapidly from a niche market into a market with high competition.
With the provided information it can be displayed that social interaction via the Internet is not a
development from our current time. The motivation to interact through the Internet network exists
since the beginning of the usage of electronic devices for communication and exchange. The main
difference, beside the displayed ongoing increasment of technological features and the more perfect
integration from the satisfaction of the interpersonal communication, which is also the fast driver for
technological improvements in the system, is the reached in the society as itself. Also former networks
or information exchanges platforms had their reach, in correlation with the overall available connection

8
to the different networks, in the history from the computer connected message exchanging, the Internet
or the WorldWideWeb.
With this information and taken the increasing competition in mind, it is very interesting for the
Internet and with this also for the media market how social network pages will increase their technical
feature base to reach fast on the market with a leading Facebook, a continuous growing Twitter and an
up catching Google+. The market leader Facebook seems also to be aware of this situation, by
introducing new features since the beginning of August 2011 by including the abilities from Google+
in a lower level as a circle approach and focusing on the fast speed communication from Twitter. With
this in mind, the international market in the section of social network pages will be still heavily active
during the next months and years and it can be possible that the market leader Facebook will be
replaced or loss traffic to new competitors soon.
For the local markets of social network pages it will be interesting how the different networks will
work out in their nice markets and if it is possible for them to survive, if the will get merged into other
networks, or if they are able to expand to different and new markets, like the VZ networks has
introduced a more customer oriented development approach in September 2011 by letting the user
designing the future feature of the different VZ networks. As outcome of this article it can be stayed
out that the social platform market itself and with this the social networks pages will change again
continues and maybe also rapidly.

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