1996

• MediaBar set up as an operating system for location based theme restaurants. Faces input into system, multi-user activity, food and drink ordering
• Microsoft's Hotmail is born

1997

• June: The Big Network, a startup in Berkeley CA, launches MyPlace - family-oriented social networking with public and private areas for friends and family to gather. The private areas include chat, calendar, forums, link sharing, image uploading, and both public and private game rooms containing single- and multi-player games.
• Photo.net community site (openacs history), based on Ars digita software
• September Slashdot founded

1999

• May: The Big Network (and MyPlace) acquired by eUniverse. eUniverse later morphs into Intermix, who launches MySpace.
• Virtualtourist.com (domained in 98) launches as a community travel site allowing members to self-publish, with ratings and forums
• ?August: Ciao (an ecommerce site) launched in Germany
• Blairwitch project phenomenon

2000

• ? GroupFire Bookmark sharing and personalized search spinoff out of PARC, crushed in '01 crash and assets acquired by Google (http://www.networkworld.com/archive/2000/85952_01-31-2000.html)
• ?March to June: Ciao launched in France, Italy, Spain and UK (is this when they added the circle of friends to profiles??)

2002

• 15 June: Meetup launches (src)
• January: Slashdot launches the zoo system

2003

• Sept: Original PeopleAggregator launches, is taken down within 6 months.

2004

• ? February: Flickr launched
• 31 December: 43 Things launches (src)

2005

• 20 March: Yahoo acquired Flickr
• 23 April: First video goes up on YouTube (src)

2006

• 30 June: PeopleAggregator relaunches - now as a meta-network white label solution. APIs here.
• 9 October: Google buys YouTube