Before Facebook, Myspace, or even the idea of a “social feed,” a New York attorney named Andrew Weinreich built SixDegrees: a website where people could create profiles, list their friends, and message one another. Inspired by Stanley Milgram’s small-world theory, Weinreich saw the internet not as a library, but as a map of human relationships — a way to make the invisible paths between people visible on screen.

The concept was startlingly early. In 1997, most people were still using slow dial-up connections, many homes weren’t online at all, and putting your real name and social circle on a website felt risky, even strange. Yet millions joined. SixDegrees contained the basic DNA of modern social media — profiles, friend lists, messaging, and networks of networks — but arrived before the culture, infrastructure, and business models were ready to sustain it.

Read the original article: https://medium.com/@dia_91230/the-social-network-that-invented-everything-and-vanished-200830d3ad39

Subscribe to The Dead Internet Almanac: https://buttondown.com/dead-internet-almanac