Andrew Weinreich founded the site in May 1996 and launched it in 1997. Users on Six Degrees were allowed to create a profile, send messages and post bulletin board items to people in their first, second, and third degrees. They could also see their connection to any other user on the site while people who didn’t register as users could confirm friendships. The model of the website connected people to a Professional Network or allowed users start up a group of friends based on common interests. Users could browse lists of friends and view the web of connections their friends had with any other user on the site.

David Kirkpatrick in his book -The Facebook Effect, described Six Degrees as “the first online business that attempted to identify and map a set of real relationships between real people using their real names”. The name of the website originated from the ‘six degrees of separation’ theory which according to Wikipedia is: the idea that all living things and everything else in the world is six or fewer steps away from each other so that a chain of “a friend of a friend” statements can be made to connect any two people in a maximum of six steps.

By December 2000, the site was sold to YouthStream Media Networks for $125 million. It is widely reported that limited access to the internet during that period was one of the reasons why the site was not sustainable despite it having a peak user base of 3.5million. For a platform created in the age of dial up and AOL, limitations of internet connectivity meant it was an idea ahead of its time. Another shortcoming of the site is that many of the users felt that it wasn’t an interesting destination because their friends weren’t members. This limited the usage of the site to inviting and accepting friend requests.

At the close of the network in 2000, Weinreich said it had failed to truly take off as a successful business because it was too ahead of its time. Many individuals were beginning to use the internet however their networks were still limited as many of their friends were yet to start using it. The site therefore promoted growing a network of strangers into friends. Also, the usefulness and entertainment value of the site was very low as members could only use Instant Messaging after getting connected. This was a tool which was already being used with other networks at that time and so Six Degrees lacked any special appeal for its users.  

The website of sixdegrees.com is still active, and it uses the tagline “The Most Exclusive Invite Only Social Network Where You Will Meet Amazing People Based on Your Interests”

About a decade ago, Nigerians paid much to browse at cyber cafes to check vital information on websites as well as to read and respond to emails in their mailboxes. Then, social media was almost unheard of in this part of the world. The most common thing then was to go to the cyber cafe to go and check a personal mailbox or to google search a project or an assignment.

The story is no longer the same today. The social media and the growth of internet service providers has birthed a whole new virtual world for all to get excited about. Youths do not need to throng the Cybercafes as much as they used to, as almost everyone now has the enabling device to go online from the comfort of their homes.

Research shows that nine out of ten youths sampled randomly are either using a Blackberry device, an Ipad or a smartphone with an internet connection. Within this huge number, statistics reveal that an average Nigerian youth with a smartphone is having one or more social media and virtual chat applications actively running on it. From Facebook to Twitter, Instagram, We Chat, Whatsapp, 2go and Blackberry Messenger, Nigerian youths are finding more ways to connect in the virtual world.

The benefits of such virtual chat apps and the ease of social media has however been two-fold. For some, it has caused their pitfall as they have spent too much precious time on it, resulting in negative impacts on their academics, businesses, relationships and so on. In some extreme cases, people get defrauded, bullied, and cajoled into devious relationships that could lead to death. Last year, the social media was agog with the news of Cynthia Osokogu who left her school, Nasarawa State University, Keffi to meet male friends she met on Facebook and was murdered by these same friends in a private hotel in Lagos. Similarly, in the UK recently, a 14-year-old girl committed suicide after repeated bullying by her friends at school and on social media.

On the flip side, there are several advantages of social media. Many have used it to build relationships, grow their business, establish their fan base and much more. To some people, the social media affords them an opportunity to chat and escape from boredom, while some see it as an avenue to explore the world of opportunities available on the internet.

Lots of jobs search sites abound online, with many testifying to have gotten their dream jobs via such sites. In the area of information dissemination, many have argued that the social media is the future of news sharing and that it is only about time when people will no longer wait for the traditional media sources to get news. As a matter of fact, before most traditional media sources report news stories, it would have already been trending on social media. Most traditional media channels have as well joined the social media to meet the yearning and expectations of their teeming followers.

Many have been duped by people on social media, many have gotten their dream job through it. Many have gotten breakthrough from the social media, while many have as well met their waterloo at it.

In the virtual world, its different strokes for different folks.

This article was first published by TelegraphNG