Six Degrees - the first online social network
Witness History
BBC
4.5 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 31 May 2019
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Six Degrees was the first online social network, allowing users to connect with their real-world contacts by creating a profile within a database.
It was created by entrepreneur Andrew Weinreich.
But Six Degrees never achieved the scale of later social networks like Facebook or MySpace, and Weinreich sold the site in 1999. He speaks to Lucy Burns about the challenges and adventures of setting it up.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
| 0:04.7 | My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds. |
| 0:08.5 | As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices. |
| 0:18.0 | What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars, |
| 0:24.6 | poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples. |
| 0:29.7 | If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC |
| 0:35.4 | Sounds. |
| 0:36.4 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
| 0:40.9 | My name's Linda Davies and I commissioned |
| 0:43.0 | podcast for BBC Sounds. |
| 0:45.0 | As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality, |
| 0:49.0 | featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices. |
| 0:54.4 | What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars, |
| 1:00.9 | poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories. |
| 1:04.3 | And that's just a few examples. |
| 1:06.2 | If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, |
| 1:09.4 | find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds. |
| 1:12.4 | Hi and thanks for downloading witness history from the BBC World Service. |
| 1:16.0 | I'm Lucy Burns and today we're looking at a milestone in the history of the internet, |
| 1:21.0 | the launch of a website called Six Degrees, which was the first online social network. |
| 1:27.0 | So let's go back to the middle of the 1990s, |
| 1:31.0 | when if you wanted to go online it still sounded like this. |
... |
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