Social Networking Services is a way of developing online communities involving people who want to share and explore interests or activities with their friends and other people. Early networking services started when some authors and analysts discovered a potential when they saw people connected with each other through networked or connected computers. After that, some developers linked computers with the internet, aiming to provide communication between people. Usenet, LISTSERV, ARPANET, and bulletin board services (BBS) are examples of early networking services. However, social networks were not yet very popular to the majority of people at that time.

During the mid-1990s, more people became familiar with the internet. It was also the time when people were further introduced to social networking services. The networking sites that were developed and introduced in that era include Theglobe.com (established on 1994), Geocities (1994), and Tripod (1995). These sites connected people and let them interact through chat rooms and allowed them to share applications, information, or ideas by means of their personal homepage. Other online communities are especially developed for people to communicate using their electronic mail (e-mail) addresses. Examples of these sites are Classmates.com (originated on 1995) and SixDegrees.com (1997). Also included to the online communities developed is Epinions.com (1999), which is purchased by Shopping.com in 2003. Shopping.com was then acquired by Ebay in 2005.

From 2002 to 2004, three online communities were introduced; which are Friendster, MySpace, and Bebo. In 2004, another social networking site was launched; Facebook. In 2005, MySpace became the largest as compared to Friendster and Bebo. An American public corporation, Yahoo! Inc. introduced their online community, called Yahoo! 3600 in March 2005.