In June 2006, The Guardian described the new “internet phenomenon of social networking,” defining it as “something which has replaced, or at least supplemented, real-life meeting up. In the real world, social networking often involves travelling, drinking, personal digital assistants and business cards, but the internet has simplified the process.”

It seems crazy now that there was ever a point where anyone had to literally define online social networking for people who weren’t familiar with it. In just a few short years, we’ve seen the rise and fall of all kinds of social tools and networks, ranging from giants like MySpace and Digg to unknown startups that barely saw the light of day.

The only thing more changeable than the mainstream popularity of a given social network is the media attitude towards it. And to be honest, a lot of those attitudes and predictions now seem pretty funny…that’s the power of hindsight for you. With two main camps – those that seemed destined to fail but are still going strong, and those that seemed destined to permanently hold their status but fell from grace – here’s a selection of fantastic quotes and predictions going all the way back to the birth of Friends Reunited in 2000.

MySpace

In 2006, Mashable named MySpace one of its top social networks of the year (because ‘anyone can be a celebrity’), with the dramatic prediction that ‘their plan to sell music from [upcoming] bands next year is surely set to reshape the music industry.’ Yep.

The same year saw The Guardian observe that social networks were the types of sites that appealed to the masses with the amusing matter-of-fact statement that ‘Most Bebo and MySpace users would not consider themselves netheads, far less nerds’ (netheads is a technical term, we’ll have you know).

Bebo

TechCrunch reported that “Bebo is one of the largest and fastest growing social networks” when it closed a $15 million round of financing in 2006, whilst just over a year later, CNN stated that “British teens have taken to Bebo with a frenzy once reserved for celebrity heartthrobs.” Proving you don’t have to choose one or the other, social networking and teenage heartthrobs later proved to be a killer combo for Justin Bieber.

The Guardian pointed out that, ‘One of the wonders of Bebo is that so many people join as themselves, albeit a slightly more glamorous version,’ – a very different world to the previous one of anonymous usernames, strings of numbers and paranoia about revealing true identities.

YouTube

Adopting Millennium Bug-style drama in 2008, The Telegraph reported that the growth of YouTube and iPlayer could destroy the web by 2010, quoting a lecturer from City University as saying, ‘“I think we’re in trouble. If you’ve got kids on YouTube and parents on iPlayer and other things going on, it all starts to go very slow.”’

Three years previously, USA Today had quoted IDC analyst’s Chris Chute’s view that it ‘will take years for these sites to take off’ because he estimated that ‘less than 10% of digital camera owners are savvy enough to take the time to sit in front of the computer and transfer video footage’, because it’s ‘“just too time-consuming and complicated.”’ However, those that saw the most success apparently didn’t overthink it and just saw it as an experiment: ‘“We put up the site to see what would happen,”’ said Jakob Lodwick, co-founder of Vimeo.

Flickr

Even more of an accidental experiment, Flickr was originally created as a side feature of an online game. An engineer at a startup ‘created a cool tool to share photos and save them to a Web page while playing.’ USA Today noted in 2006 that the ‘cool tool’ had an interesting new feature ‘called “tagging” — adding a few words of text to each posted photo — so that a picture can be easily searched online.’ Despite seeming obvious now, this was one of the crucial factors in Flickr’s success. The original game was never finished, instead being dropped altogether so that the company could focus on the photo sharing website, which was sold to Yahoo in 2005.

Reddit

Built in just three weeks, Reddit grew quickly but was always stifled by its nearest competitor. In October 2006, TechCrunch disparagingly – but accurately – described the website as ‘a social news site that has always played second fiddle to Digg’. Digg’s sudden and rapid decline in popularity paved the way for Reddit’s massive growth and the website amassed 37 billion page views last year alone.

Facebook

Facebook’s future was being brought into question even before it had finished opening up to UK universities thanks to The Guardian, who in 2006 believed that widespread adoption could lead to its downfall and its success lay in elitism: “Members of online social networking sites display the same preferences as people who meet in bars: they only want to be where the cool and pretty people are.” This tied in with TechCrunch’s view that ‘the biggest use of the site appears to be dating’.

However, Facebook has always seemed to mean different things to different people. The Guardian rather optimistically stated that, ‘Students used to make collective trips to the library, but Facebook means you can work in your own room and make it a more pleasurable experience.’ One indignant TechCrunch commenter had a very different view: “I think that the Facebook is worse than pornography. It’s all about sex, swearing and drinking. What kind of example is it setting to college students who’re supposed to be doing their work? Thanks to this nasty website, students now think that you gotta be drinking all the time to be cool.”

One statement from The Guardian’s article still holds true though: “It is a wonder anyone finds time to graduate these days, what with organising Facebook friends, loading photos and writing music and film lists.”

Friends Reunited

Created in the year 2000, Friends Reunited was one of the world’s original social networking sites. Despite a successful sale to ITV, it was slow to evolve and only became free to use in 2008, by which point it had long since been overtaken by the likes of Facebook and LinkedIn (ITV later sold it to Brightsolid Limited at a £105 million loss). Back in 2002, The Observer noted that, “It is one of Britain’s most popular websites” and rather more whimsically, “Friends Reunited has brought together old schoolfriends and childhood sweethearts in thousands of emotional reunions,” whilst the BBC dubbed it an online crime-fighting tool.

Tumblr

When Tumblr was created, many of the mainstream media outlets wondered how long it would survive as it didn’t seem to bring anything particularly new to the table and there was a question mark over its profitability since the founders believed in a strict no-ad policy. In 2008 there were raised eyebrows as its ‘newest funding round means…investors think the company will be worth as much as $50 million by the time he [CEO David Karp] sells it or raises more cash. In order to prove them right, he’s got a lot of work ahead of him.’

The doubt about Tumblr’s worth and longevity turned out to be an unfounded concern; it was recently sold to Yahoo! for $1.1 billion. Not bad going for a company reportedly worth $15 million just five years ago.

Twitter

With a name inspired by Flickr, ‘Twttr’ started life as a side project for a start-up, leading TechCrunch to query how shareholders of Twitter’s parent company felt about time and money being spent on it in an article titled ‘Is Twttr Interesting?’ in 2006. Co-founder Evan Williams explained it as simply a way to keep in touch: ‘If you don’t happen to look at the world as just different incarnations of blogging, than [sic] think of it as a way to keep in touch with friends throughout the day.’

Upon launch, ‘very few people understood its value’, and it started life as an SMS-based service before later switching its focus to the web. Gigaom described it as ‘not a very complicated application – and which is what makes it so addictive and at the same time annoying.’

The true value of social networking

Beyond turf wars, the popularity game, monetisation and the rise and fall of social communities, one thing remains constant. The true value of our social networks lies in the people. It’s already been stated that social networks are by far the biggest archive of human history and behaviour, and never before have so many people had so big a voice, both on an individual level and as part of a crowd. ‘Everyone on Bebo and MySpace and Facebook has become their own publicist, shouting Me Me Me,’ and, strangely enough, that’s largely turned out to be a good thing.