Makeoutclub.com is widely considered the first niche-audience social network. Launched in 1999 by web designer Gibby Miller, and preceding Friendster, Myspace, and Facebook - Makeoutclub (or MOC) was vital to the early development of profile-based communities, introducing features and concepts (such as photo/interests based user profiles) which helped to forge what was later coined "Social Networking". Today, MOC maintains its grassroots and underground appeal, with over a hundred-thousand dedicated members between 13-30 in the independent music, tech, and fashion space.
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Purpose

Makeoutclub was founded as a music/subculture related social networking site to provide a community for persons with similar style and musical tastes, stating on their website: "...for indierockers, hardcore kids, record collectors, artists, bloggers, and hopeless romantics." It features user profiles, image galleries, private galleries, message boards, blogs, private mail, and music and entertainment news. Despite the site's name, MakeOutClub's owner insists that it is not a dating site, though it is often referred to as such. This assertion has been challenged many times over.

History, Facts, and Versions

(1999) Beta: A beta version of Makeoutclub (abbreviated as MOC) was launched in August, 1999 by web designer Gibby Miller while attending Massachusetts College of Art in Boston, MA. This version was designed as "Makeoutclub" but was hosted privately, the URL given to friends to "leak" for testing purposes before launch. Users submitted a "profile" via email to the Miller and the admins of the site, who then hand-coded the users information into a small profile box that appeared on numbered pages, 10 users per page, divided by "Girls" and "Boys. After word caught on, and the amount of profile submissions grew unmanageable, Miller launched an automated 1.0 version of the site at the Makeoutclub.com URL in July of 2000.

(2000) 1.0: Version 1.0 was the "release" version of MOC that featured automated submissions, allowing a queue of prospective members to form, which admins approved on a daily basis. This was done to weed out spam and fake profiles.

(2001) 2.0: Version 2.0 was a bug-fixing and security upgrade, which offered additional features like HTML in profiles and colored usernames.

(2004) 3.0: Version 3.0 added a new design, additional bug fixes, and security upgrades.

(2007) 4.0: Version 4.0 was an entirely new platform, and offered users their own individual profile pages with comments, blogs, and the ability to add and display friends. Users could now add multiple images to a gallery, send private messages to one another, and block others users. This version also introduced multiple forums.

(2008) 5.0: Verstion 5.0 is the current live version of the site, which improved upon 4.0 adding private galleries, the ability to "wink" others users, post "shoutouts", create "crush lists" (secret friends lists that reveal the crush connection if two users "crush one another), and search for users in your area (along with user vicinity recommendation).

The site’s goal was to bring people together to "meet each other, form bands, find love, find roommates and to submit user profiles, photographs and art to the site for everyone to see".

Makeoutclub went on to be featured in Time Magazine, The Face UK, MTV2, Much Music, G4 Tech TV, Rolling Stone, and myriads of other publications during the height of its popularity between 2000-2003.

The site was named after the song "Make Out Club" by the band Unrest

Unrest (band)

Unrest is an indie rock band from the Washington, D.C. area. It was one of Mark Robinson's projects for what would eventually become the TeenBeat label, also created by Mark while in high school. Developing from an experimental approach of never playing the same song twice, earlier material seemed...

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At the "Tin Can Full of Dreams" music festival in Providence, Rhode Island in 2000, Gibby was handing out flyers promoting the website, and referred to it as a "Network" where people could meet one another. He later remarked to friends that people bristled at the term "Network" and poked fun at the idea. "Social Network" is now the term used to describe much of what Makeoutclub.com laid the groundwork for.

Since its inception, Makeoutclub has continuously been linked to the hipster, emo, and indie subcultures.

Present

Makeoutclub currently has over 100,000 active users, with new members joining daily. The site is updated, administered, moderated, and maintained by a group of friends and volunteers, which has rotated throughout the years. On remaining a niche presence in the constantly evolving Social Networking space, Miller says: "Our goals haven't changed in [10] years, we are just keeping up with the times. Now more than ever deep niche communities online deserve the tools and technology the online audience have come to expect. This is a great time for MOC to flourish. Plus, we are geeks and can't help innovating.”