Development of social networking

Development of social networking

1. 1997: The Birth of Social Media The first social media site that everyone can agree actually was social media was a website called Six Degrees. It was named after the ‘six degrees of separation’ theory and lasted from 1997 to 2001. Six Degrees allowed users to create a profile and then friend other users. Six Degrees even allowed those who didn’t register as users to confirm friendships and connected quite a few people this way. Although blogging may not seem like social media precisely, the term fits because people were suddenly able to communicate with a blog other instantly as well as other readers. The term “blog” is a form of the phrase “Weblog” which was coined by Jorn Barger, an early blogger that was the editor of the site “Robot Wisdom.”

2. 2000: The Internet is Everywhere By the year 2000, around 100 million people had access to the internet, and it became quite common for people to be engaged socially online. Of course, then it was looked at as an odd hobby at best. Still, more and more people began to utilize chat rooms for making friends, dating and discussing topics that they wanted to talk about. But the huge boom of social media was still to come.

   • Habbo Launched in the year 2000 It has expanded to 31 countries and the service is available in 20 languages.
   • Orkut It is a social network promoted by Google since January 2004.

3. 2003: The First Social Media Surge Although the younger generation of today might not know about it, back in the early 2000’s the website MySpace was the popular place to set up a profile and make friends. MySpace was the original social media profile website, leading into and inspiring websites like Facebook. Another website that was one of the beginning social media websites was LinkedIn, still a social media website today, geared specifically towards professionals who want to network with each other. In fact, most of the social media websites we have today are similar to LinkedIn, in that they are specifically about one particular thing, or they have some kind of unique quality that has made them popular.

   • MySpace August 2003
   • Second life Released June 23, 2003 Developed by Linden Lab, and is freely accessible on the Internet.

4. 2005: Facebook and Twitter In 2004, Mark Zuckerberg launched what would soon become the social media giant that would set the bar for all other social media services. Facebook is the number one social media website today and it currently boasts over a billion users. However, back in 2004, Facebook (TheFacebook.com then) was launched just for Harvard students. Today, Twitter has over 500 million users.

   • Facebook Released in February 2004 In mid-2007 it launched the French, German and Spanish versions to boost its expansion outside the United States, as its users are concentrated in the United States, Canada and Great Britain. In July 2010, Facebook has 500 million members, and translations into 70 languages.
   • Twitter Twitter began as a research and development project within Obvious, LLC, a small start-up in San Francisco, during March 2006.
   • Tuenti Opened in January 2006 Tuenti is one of the most visited websites in Spain, according to Alexa Internet. Recently the functionality of Video Chat has been added, with which it is possible to chat with friends through the social network chat
   • Sonic Launched on July 28, 2007 Sonico is an online social network of free access oriented to the Latin American public. As of November 25, 2009, it has 43,335,453 users.

5. Around 2010: The Rest of the Pack Before long, there were dozens of other websites providing social media services of some kind. Flickr was one of the earliest and still is one of themost popular photo sharing sites, but others include Photobucket and Instagram, with Instagram gaining popularity today as one of the top social media sites to include on business cards and other media. Foursquare was quite a popular website for a while, particularly with smartphones being used so extensively, and then there is Pinterest, Spotify, and many others. Some of the most popular social media platforms in the late 2000’s included: Google Buzz, Loopt, Blippy, and Groupon.

   • Snapchat is a mobile application that is considered part of social networks, but so is the rest that allows the sending of photos and videos through this application to other users and that pass a few seconds are deleted instantly from the device to whom they were sent . Created by North American students in 2010 in order to send private messages and other people.

6. Social Media Today Social media today consists of thousands of social media platforms, all serving the same – but slightly different purpose. Of course, some social media platforms are more popular than others, but even the smaller ones get used by a portion of the population because each one caters to a very different type of person. As mentioned, businesses are using social media to promote their products and services in a brand new way and so each form of social media serves a purpose that the others available may not.

7. The Future of Social Media Although it is impossible to know what the future of social media holds, it is clear that it will continue. Humans are social animals and the more ability to communicate with each other on the level that each person likes best, the more prevalent social media will become. With new and exciting technologies just around the corner, social media will be interesting to see in the coming decades.