Although modern social networks such as MySpace.com, FaceBook.com, Orkutt, LinkedIn, and XING are enjoying a great deal of notoriety and success these days due to their popularity with–and wild embrace by–today’s youth and the business community, their roots can be directly traced to Classmates.com and SixDegrees.com, both of which were formed in 1995 and 1997 respectively. In other words, it took 13 years for modern social networks to finally reach their peak–become ascendant-instead of some spontaneous explosion in popularity. Therefore, contrary to the idea that this is some sort of new Web 2.0 phenomena, this ascendant position most resembles the supernova stage of social networks and the beginning or emergence of a new phenomena.
