Communities.com is a non-commercial, advertisement-free, Internet social networking Website that started in 1996 and is considered the first social network website in the world. Also, it is one of the oldest social network websites still operating.
Communities.com was originally funded by SoftBank, the Japanese investment bank, with an initial $120 million investment. By 2000, a total of approximately $200 million was invested and the company had over 200 employees. The site grew to over 5 million registered users and it is estimated Communities.com was the largest social network until Myspace exceeded its size.Communities.com was originally located across from Apple headquarters in Cupertino, California.
In late 2000, Communities.com pulled their IPO with an initial $2.1 billion valuation. Six months later, Open Text Corporation made a $1.5 million investment before the company filed Chapter 7 in 2001. A Communities.com junior employee, who made less than $50,000 a year, purchased the social network for approximately $30,000 out of bankruptcy.Patrick and Ingemar are said to have bought the domain. As per Patrick, the domain was first registered in 1995 by "Electric Communities Inc.", who had over $100 million in venture capital.
When Electric Communities filed Chapter 11 and ceased all business operations, including running the web sites communities.com and thepalace.com. The Palace was, and still is, a popular chat client developed by Electric Communities. Both domains (communities.com and thepalace.com) were dropped (anyone who wants can register them again and the domains will be theirs). Both domains were immediately picked up by someone or some company and sold at two different auctions. He continued running the site and it is now run by a group of volunteers.
