We have been communicating with each other probably since the dawn of time. We certainly can date back to the cave drawings, which, in its way, told a story of the people who lived there. Why was it painted? Perhaps to tell those who came after what had happened. An early version of Wikipedia???
Since then, we’ve had all types of communicative medium from the printing press to the telegraph and telephones. Newspapers brought us the news, and we could communicate via ‘letters to the editor’. But previous interactions either simply involved a few people or were limited to what was allowed to be published. The difference with social media is that it enables the users to interact with each other and publish their own content.
Social media didn’t come into being until the 1980s-90s and the development of personal computers. Once people could start blogging and the bulletin board system developed in the 90s, the average person could log on and write their thoughts and feelings about any given topic. These then could be read and commented on by others.
The first ‘social media’ website was Six Degrees. It was named after the six degrees of separation theory. Suddenly here was a platform that a person could sign up using their email address, create a personal profile and add friends to their private network. It ended up with around 3.5 million users but didn’t last long after it sold in 1999.
Next came Friendster. Just like its predecessor, it allowed the user to set up a personal network of friends. On this website, the users were able to share photos and videos and message with other users. As long as you were ‘friends’, you were able to leave comments to each other. It became much bigger than Six Degrees growing to over one hundred million users.
It did change though, because, in 2011, it became a social gaming site keeping it viable as it competed with others like Google, Yahoo and Facebook. It officially signed off in 2019.
One of the first social media sites was LinkedIn, founded in 2002. It focused on professionals allowing people to connect with schools, companies and businesses. This is still its primary function, and now there are over 575 million registered users.
As for the really ‘social’ sites, MySpace probably was the most influential. It started as a file storage platform in 2003 but quickly became the most popular and most prominent social media site. And by 2005, it was evident that MySpace was here to stay.
But change was in the air. There were a couple of reasons its popularity took a tumble.
One reason was the rise of Facebook. No longer just a college network, Facebook attracted a wider audience. The second reason was the deal MySpace had done with Google about on-site advertising. These ads generated revenue, but the site was overloaded, and people began to migrate to the ads-free Facebook and YouTube. (How that’s changed!).
MySpace is still around; however, it doesn’t have the same clout as other platforms.
Facebook, founded by Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollom, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes, arrived in 2004 as a social media site for Harvard college students. It expanded to other colleges, and then in 2006, it was open to anyone over the age of 13. Today it is ranked in the top 3 most visited websites, just behind Google and YouTube. Facebook has over 2.6 billion users.
Other times-lines:
- 2006 Twitter was created
- 2010 Instagram was launched
- 2011 Snapchat arrived
- 2016 TikTok emerged from a combination of the Musical.ly and Douyin apps.
You could safely say that social media platforms don’t have a long history, but they certainly have had enormous influence and today are an integral part of the lives of some 2.62 billion. By 2025 this is expected to grow to over 4 billion.
No doubt new companies will develop, and it will be interesting to watch how the older ones merge and morph to stay current.
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