It is 2012, social networks are the most common way for people to communicate and yet while there are clear leaders such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn there are also hundreds of other services vying for market share on the internet.

Google+ is of course the newest to the leader pack, but even it is suffering the slings and arrows of mediocrity when compared to the established networks.

So why is it failing? and why do so many fail where others succeed?

First a little history.

• 2004 – Facebook launches, limited to Harvard Students.
• mid-2004 – Facebook expands to include other university campuses.
• 2005 – A ‘High School’ version of Facebook is launched.
• 2006 – Twitter is launched limiting its users to only 140 characters per update.
• late-2006 – Facebook is opened to the public.
• 2007 – Twitter’s popularity gains ground with SXSW festival participants.
• 2008 - Twitter has 100 million tweets posted per quarter.
• late-2008 - Facebook sets up international HQ in Dublin, Ireland.
• 2009 - Twitter crash due to  Michael Jacksons death, 100,000 tweets a minute.
• late-2009 - Facebook becomes ‘cash-positive’ for the first time.
• 2010 - Twitter has 65 million tweets a day posted on average.
• 2010 - Facebook’s estimated value calculated to be $41 billion.
• 2011 - 20,000 pages are removed from Facebook per day due to security issues.
• late-2011 - Twitter rolls out its third major design change.

This of course is by no means a full and annotated history of social networks, but it does include several important milestones along the way. Both Twitter and Facebook have had their fair share of scandals and hardships placed upon them due to world events, international legislation and capacity problems, both services however have managed to keep afloat through incoming investments and several venture capital rounds.

You might at this time be wondering why I haven’t mentioned other networks like Bebo, Pownce, Identi.ca or Yammer. Well don’t fret, I’m getting to those…

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