Many prototypical features of social networking sites were also present in online services such as America Online, Prodigy, CompuServe, ChatNet, and The WELL.
Prizadevanja o podpori spletnih socialnih omrežij skozi računalniško posredovano komunikacijo so se začela v mnogih zgodnjih spletnih storitvah, vključno z Usenet, ARPANET, LISTSERV in storitvah oglasne deske (BBS).