Today is January 11, 2008 and for those at my company, Netmodular, the day has cause for a bit of reflection.

You see, it was quite a push, seven years ago today, January 11, 2001, for OEI / Netmodular to publicly release our Social Networking platform, previously code named The Bay Bridge Project, and to finish testing our first true Social Networking site, called MyCommunity, followed up by our first hit community, NetPlaya which was for Burning Man enthusiasts.

Netplaya Screens

By October 2001, "MyCommunity", became the first full-featured social application built on top of the platform.

At the time we felt that we were late to the scene with a popular site, because Friendster landed a multi-million dollar venture deal and looked like their Beta would ship in a matter of months.

Times have changed.

The industry is now a multi-billion dollar industry with literally hundreds of startups and new services in just the last year alone. I can only imagine what 2008 will bring.

Marc Cantor's Page on Sullivan Executive In 2003, there were not a lot of Social Networking services, but it is funny how certain people seem to have found them all! Noreen Sullivan has likely forgotten more about Social Networking than you'll ever know.

Last night we toasted to the original team, and what turns out to be an interesting conversation about the business of Social Networking.

Thanks to Marty and Kirk, the lead designers and impetus behind NetPlaya, and to everyone at Netmodular!

Those were some days.

Nano Technology Conferences By 2004, It seemed we had done a site for every imaginable subject. It took a few years for business to really start to understand the value of networking, but by 2004, there were all kinds of people who saw the value in it.