Online social networks have been around for a long time. Well before Mark Zuckerberg built the Facebook empire and his former partners were told to “lawyer up,” sites like TheGlobe and Classmates gave users the ability to connect with friends online. The early emergence of social media and the exponential growth of its user population is a testament to the power of community — even when isolated to their offices or homes, users of these sites are dedicated to connecting with others through online networks.
Yet despite the siren call that causes people to periodically join social networks in droves, these sprawling online empires eventually collapse. Social networks tend to implode when their users are seduced by the novelty of competitors, site infrastructure isn’t updated, or their funders never quite find a way to monetize human interactions and end up bankrupt. Whatever happens, an abandoned site is rarely taken fully offline; it becomes a virtual ghost town where the only interaction between users are crude offers of free porn to inactive accounts from spambots unhindered by the site’s out-of-work moderators…
Article and illustration by Dan Seljak.
