A Practical Guide to Social Networking

Social networking in 2004 wasn’t one thing yet, it was several competing, immature products, each with a different crowd and a different set of rules. Friendster had already peaked and was struggling with slow load times as it scaled. LinkedIn, launched in May 2003, was quietly building a base of professionals. Orkut, Google’s invite-only network, launched in January 2004 and spread fast in a handful of countries. And in February 2004, a Harvard-only site called Thefacebook launched, restricted to students with a .edu email address.

None of this was mature enough for a polished playbook. What follows is a practical rundown of what made sense to do on each, given what these platforms were in 2004.

Friendster: mostly a lesson in what not to do

Friendster is worth understanding even though it’s fading, because it shows what happens when a platform outgrows its infrastructure. Load times had gotten bad enough by 2004 that users were actively leaving for alternatives. The practical takeaway for a business isn’t a Friendster strategy, it’s a reminder that a social platform’s technical reliability is part of its value, and a slow, frustrating product will bleed users no matter how strong the initial idea was.

LinkedIn: the closest thing to a real business tool

LinkedIn is the one network on this list built explicitly around professional identity rather than personal socializing, and it’s the one most directly useful to a business today. A complete profile with a real work history functions like a standing resume and reference check combined. For a services business or a consultant, building out connections here and asking satisfied clients for a written recommendation, LinkedIn’s version of a testimonial, is worth the modest time investment. It won’t drive volume the way a review site does, but the credibility it builds is durable.

Orkut: interesting, but not yet a market

Orkut spread quickly after its January 2004 launch, particularly in Brazil and, for a period, in the United States among early tech adopters, but it was invite-only and its growth was uneven across regions. Unless your customers happen to be concentrated in one of the places Orkut caught on, it’s premature to build a presence there. It’s worth watching as a signal that Google is serious about social products, not as a channel to invest real effort in yet.

Thefacebook: too early to use, worth watching closely

Thefacebook’s restriction to Harvard, and shortly after, other universities, means it’s not usable for most businesses in 2004 at all. But the fact that a closed, verified-identity network is spreading so fast among students is a meaningful signal. Networks that require real names and verified affiliations tend to produce more honest, higher-trust interactions than pseudonymous ones. If this expands past universities, it’s likely to become one of the more important platforms on this list, not because of its size yet, but because of the kind of trust its structure encourages.

The practical takeaway for 2004

Don’t try to have a presence everywhere. Pick the one platform that overlaps most with where your actual customers or professional network already are, LinkedIn for most B2B or services businesses right now, and put real effort into a complete, honest profile there rather than a thin presence on four different sites. The networks that will matter most in a few years haven’t finished sorting themselves out yet. Spreading your attention thin across all of them costs you the depth that makes any one of them worthwhile.