Social Media Pioneers: Let us Pay a Debt of Gratitude to Those That Came Before

For instance, if Zuckerberg had been a party planner or a writer he could have taken the failures of the party planners and writers before him and leaned from their experiences.

Friendster and MySpace knew that people are social creatures, what they never could have expected was Farmville.

Xanga, Friendster and MySpace were innovators, they just happened to innovate too far in the wrong directions. As Facebook has proven, it helps when your visionary sees in the exact right direction and knows how to move forward.

Learning from Past Industry Mistakes and Failures

In any niche, there will be businesses that do not succeed.

Even in their “failure,” these businesses set a foundation and pave the way for the people who make money down the road. Even though Friendster does not have a billion users, does not make news headlines and did not have a large Hollywood movie made about it, we need to remember it. It’s part of our history.

So let us pay a debt of gratitude to the social networks that came before.

Here’s to the pioneers of the ‘poke,’ to the forefathers of followers and the explorers of everything online. We owe you a billion connections and several billion hours beyond that.

We owe you our “social media” lives. To Friendster, I sincerely thank you. To MySpace, you’ll always have a special place in my heart. To Xanga, I wish we’d known each other better, but from what I hear, you were a real hoot.

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Photo: Solestruck

Alice Jenkins is a writer, graphic designer and marketer. When she’s not spending too much time on Facebook, she writes about social media, small business branding and design. Alice writes for PensXpress, a business that specializes in personalized pens of all kinds, even wedding pens.