SixDegrees

SixDegrees was an early online social networking service launched in 1997 by Andrew Weinreich in New York City. Named after the six degrees of separation theory, the site aimed to map and explore social connections online. It allowed users to create profiles, list friends, and browse relationships through up to six degrees of separation.

The platform offered features such as viewing mutual friends and discovering people through their network connections. Users could send messages and invitations within the site, and the concept of a social graph—where profiles and relationships could be navigated as a structured network—was a central focus. SixDegrees attracted media attention and a growing user base in the late 1990s, making it one of the first attempts to apply online networking at scale.

Despite early interest, SixDegrees faced challenges in monetization, infrastructure, and competition as later social platforms emerged. The service gradually declined and was eventually discontinued in the early 2000s. Its business model and technology did not endure against newer, more scalable networks, but its decline helped illustrate the evolving requirements of online social ecosystems.

Legacy and influence: SixDegrees is widely regarded as one of the first social networking services to implement a profile-centric, graph-based approach to social connections. It helped popularize concepts such as friends lists, profile pages, and friend-of-a-friend discovery, which later became standard features on many social platforms. The site is frequently cited in discussions of the early history of online social networking and the development of social graphs.