Sunday, 6 November 2016

Long Island Advertising Agencies: What Was Six Degrees?

By Robert Sutter


Technology comes with its fair share of history, which makes sense. After all, growth is something that we can easily track, even when it comes to the social media websites we use on a routine basis. This brings us to Six Degrees, which is a name that most people might not be familiar with. As you'll come to learn, with the help of Long Island advertising agencies, Six Degrees played its own part in creating social media as we know it today.

Six Degrees is regarded, by many, as the first-ever social media website. It launched back in 1997, meaning that it predates Friendster and MySpace, and lasted up until 2001. It allowed users to list people that they know, ranging from friends to family members. While this might seem like a given these days, back then it was a unique feature that no other site seemed to boast. This is just the start to the knowledge that Long Island advertising agencies can pass down.

It wasn't like Six Degrees was a niche idea that became a footnote, though. According to reputable authorities like fishbat, millions of users signed up for the website in order to implement the aforementioned features. Back in the late 90s and early aughts, though, not as many people were connected to the Internet as they are now. What this meant was that social circles weren't exactly broad. This, along with an influx of spam accounts, didn't do Six Degrees many favors.

It wasn't until 1999 - two years after Six Degrees first launched - that the site was sold. The buyer was YouthStream Media Networks, which purchased the aforementioned social media website for $125 million. One can make the argument that Six Degrees came out during a time when the Internet wasn't exactly robust, which didn't help its growth. This, along with the lack of long-term engagement that the site offered, spelled the end for the site in 2001.

Hopefully this information has given you a better understanding of Six Degrees and the impression it made. Even though it didn't have the longest run, one could make the argument that the sites we enjoy today owe something to it. Six Degrees is definitely old-school compared to what we have now. Nonetheless, it's a neat nugget of history that's worth learning about, particularly by those who pride themselves on being social media enthusiasts.




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