1999: Gaydar

A social network for gay people may have been a niche website set up just before the dawn of the millennium but it's often overlooked in the history of the development of social networking, connecting similar people with similar interests to each other.

2003: MySpace

'A Place For Friends' began mimicking Friendster but excelled amongst bands and music lovers, keen to make their songs available to listen to for free. Purchased by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation in 2005 for $580m

2005: Bebo

Created by Michael and Xochi Birch, Bebo, an acronym for 'Blog Early, Blog Often' gained huge success amongst young internet users in various countries, but mostly Ireland, the UK, Australia and New Zealand, quickly becoming the centre of the online universe for Irish school children. Bought by AOL in 2008 for $850m.

2004: Facebook

The most successful social network in the world, was created by Mark Zuckerberg and his college roommates while they were at Harvard. Was instrumental in the online migration of non-digital natives (ie, people who didn't grow up with the internet), with an older audience driving its usage. In 2007, Microsoft bought a 1.6% share for $240m, but its real value lies somewhere around $5bn.

2006: Twitter

Twitter brought microblogging to the masses, creating a global collective conscience all answering the question: 'what are you doing?' What initially seemed to be an inane mess of thoughts, often shows real purpose in sharing of ideas and influencing political movements.

The Future

Web 3.0 aka The Semantic Web

A further evolution of the internet that 'understands' user requests providing tailored information. Many people see Twitter as the first real link between Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 as Twitter connects people to ideas, not just information.

Foursquare

A mobile geography based social network.

Wireless power

Inductive charging using an electromagnetic field to charge mobile devices without cables. The Powermat is chasing early success in this developing market.

Expanding Wi-Fi clouds

Free WiFi in urban centres will continue to become more prevalent.

iPad

Apple's tablet computer which is expected to muscle in on the digital book market currently dominated by Amazon's Kindle reader, along with other bells and whistles.