Social Media From the 90s

Social media has become such an of import part of our lives that it'south easy to call up it has always been there. However, knowing that social media can't exist without the internet, some unproblematic math should tell us social media tin can't be more than 30 years old (the internet started becoming mainstream in the early 1990s).

Nonetheless, believe it or not, social media is even younger than that. In fact, it wasn't until the late 1990s that it really became pop all the same information technology took even longer, until around 2005, for it to become the social and cultural institution it is today.

In that location are a few reasons for this, but perhaps the most significant is the now universal nature of smartphones. We can access the internet from pretty much anywhere, and this means social media is never more than a few clicks away, something that wasn't the case until the iPhone hit the market back in 2007.

Furthermore, it took some fourth dimension for the tech companies to figure out why people wanted to apply social media in the start identify. This is why we run across so many companies in the early years of social media get very pop very speedily but then neglect in dramatic manner. For example, remember when MySpace was a thing? And how many of us had a Friendster profile? These sites were all the rage, only they quickly died out and are forgotten forever. Withal, cheers to Mark Zuckerberg and company, they finally plant the correct formula and social media every bit nosotros know information technology was born.

Social Media Use Over the Years

To give you an idea of just how turbulent social media history has been, take a look at the following graph depicting the number of social media users over the years:

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Social media is clearly growing rapidly, and this kind of rapid growth is bound to produce lots of modify as companies, and users, try to effigy out what they desire. This means that while social media has been growing constantly for the past 20 years, there have been lots of ups and downs along the way.

What is Social Media?

Defined very broadly, social media is any blazon of communication within a group. In this sense, social media has been around since the times of town criers and messenger pigeons.

Withal, information technology's not hard to encounter how the term social media as used today refers to a very different type of communication, and while most of the states empathize what social media is when nosotros see it, there is still a lack of total consensus every bit to what it means.

But if nosotros combine the many different definitions out there, we come with this:

Social media is online communication designed to create networks and communities where information, ideas, messages, photos, etc. tin be freely shared.

It'southward easy to see how social media could exist traced back hundreds if not thousands of years, but today we understand social media as something that takes place online, which ways nosotros only need to go dorsum a few decades to find the beginning of social media.

The Invention of Social Media

Those who have seen The Social Network may exist under the impression that social media was created when Marker Zuckerberg and his friends got together on Harvard's campus to create "TheFaceBook." While Facebook did play an important role in making social media popular, it was hardly the first site.

In fact, social media was officially born in 1997 just the roots of social media trace dorsum fifty-fifty further, to the early on 1990s and the birth of the blogosphere. Blogs planted in people's head the thought that you could log onto the internet and post any you wanted, and receive feedback about information technology, without having to get through a 3rd party. It was truly revolutionary, and information technology opened the door for the social media revolution that was about to occur.

Social Media Timeline

The history of social media is divers by change. An initial flurry of new sites emerged at the turn of the millennium, but past the finish of the 2000s, Facebook emerged as the leader, a position information technology still holds today.

Several new players accept entered the scene in the past decade, all the same just time will tell if they can continue their success or if they will fall like and then many have before.

1997 - Six Degrees

Although blogging gave birth to the concept that would somewhen turn into social media, it wasn't until 1997 that we had a website that resembles what we now understand to be social media. This site, Six Degrees, immune users to brand their ain personalized profiles but to communicate with other users, i needed to "add" some other person'southward profile, which is an early example of "Friending" someone.

The name of this site comes from the "Vi Degrees (of Kevin Bacon)" theory that states we are all related to ane another within 6 degrees of separation (although there's show to suggest it might exist less).

The site became quite popular after it's launch - it had iii.5 million users at its near popular - just by 1999, the handwriting was on the wall. The site was bought by Youthstream Media, and by 2001 it was shutdown.

Six Degrees didn't final considering of a problem common to all early on social media sites: monetization. It was customary to offer these services for free, but this meant using ads to generate revenue, which oftentimes interfered with the feel.

However, people knew this kind of website was valuable, which is why Vi Degrees was sold for effectually $120 million, though this number is quite small compared to the valuations that would come afterward in social media history.

2002 - Friendster

In 2002, a few years after Half-dozen Degrees was bought out and sold, Friendster launched. It was like to Half-dozen Degrees in that users needed to create a profile and and so add their friends to their network to interact. However, it went further than Six Degrees in that it allowed people to share videos and photos, likewise as bulletin other people on the network.

These exciting new features made Friendster incredibly popular at the time of launch. In fact, it had more than 3 million users later on but a few months, and, in 2008, it surpassed the 100 million user mark. Of course, nosotros all know that Facebook currently has billions of users, but Friendster did considerably better than any other site before information technology.

Friendster also stood upwardly ameliorate against the test of time than Half dozen Degrees although it would besides fail in the end. It continued to be in use until 2011 when information technology was converted into a social gaming platform and all services were suspended in 2015. However, Friendster helped make social media more popular than it had ever been, setting the stage for a revolution.

2002 - LinkedIn

Somewhat surprisingly, the next social media site to appear on the scene was LinkedIn. It first launched in December 2002 as a site focused on helping professionals build a network, and this remains its purpose to this mean solar day.

The number of LinkedIn users has grown considerably over the years, with most of the growth occurring alongside other social media sites. More specifically, LinkedIn has experienced a 1,262 percent increase in number of users in the past ten years.

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2002 - MySpace

Those who don't mistakenly credit Facebook with beingness the original social media site normally think MySpace was first on the scene. And while it'south true in that location were several sites already in operation by the time MySpace launched, information technology's likewise true that Myspace completely changed the game.

It officially launched in 2002, a incomparably big year for social media, and past 2005 it had effectually twenty meg unique visitors to the site every month. In that same twelvemonth, Rupert Murdoch's company, NewsCorp, bought the sight for over $580 one thousand thousand.

Then, over the next few years, MySpace continued to gain in popularity, so much then that by 2008 it had just nether eighty million unique monthly visitors and was valued at $12 billion. At that fourth dimension, information technology was also the #1 virtually visited website in the world, according to Alexa traffic rankings; today, information technology is ranked in the 4,000s.

Part of MySpace'south success came from its interactive platform that made it incredibly easy to share photos, videos, and other files. It' also true that MySpace entered the fray at a fourth dimension when the internet was more than popular and widespread. Millennials were entering high school and higher, and this meant the globe was finally prepare for social media.

However, as we know based on the number of people currently using MySpace, the site's success would not last. A big part of this was due to the fact that Myspace, beginning in 2004, had to compete with Facebook, which was quickly condign ane of the most popular sites in the unabridged world. This meant that by 2007, when it had 300 million users, MySpace was at its elevation. It sold in 2011 for $35 million, and it was later on bought by Time, Inc. in 2015. It still exists today and has a niche post-obit, but it is a mere shadow of the giant information technology once was.

2004 - Facebook

By 2004, social media had get quite pop. Yet, when Mark Zuckerberg and his friends, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollom, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes, created TheFaceBook, social media speedily became an integral office of our lives.

Initially only available to those with an "@harvard.edu" electronic mail address, Facebook quickly expanded to the rest of the Ivy League, as well every bit Stanford and MIT, until opening its doors in 2006 to anyone over the age of thirteen.

Once it did this, in that location was no stopping Facebook'southward growth. In 2008, it overtook MySpace as the most-visited site in the world, and it currently sites at #3 behind Google and YouTube. In 2012, the visitor went public at a market value of $104 billion, one of the largest IPOs of all fourth dimension, and it continues to be one of the most profitable companies in the world.

In recent years, Facebook has seen slightly slower growth every bit the market becomes saturated, and it has also been the field of study of some heated privacy debates. Nevertheless, it remains people'due south top option for social media, which means we tin expect it to remain for many years to come up.

2006 - Twitter

Although the name Twitter is just as well-known every bit that of Facebook, it has never reached the same level of popularity as its biggest rival, despite launching just 2 years after it in 2006.

In an attempt to practise something different, Twitter express people to just 140-character posts. This idea did work, although it took the site nigh four years to attain xxx million monthly users. However, in the past ten years, that number has grown to over 300 meg.

In 2013, the company went public and received a valuation of $14.two billion. Yet the company struggled to make a turn a profit, needing until 2018 to mail service its first-ever profitable year.

But in that location are signs that Twitter might be entering a decline; it has been losing monthly users e'er since the end of 2017, and the visitor has a current market value of around 4 billion, making it almost two-thirds less valuable than when information technology first went public. However, some debate that less users makes Twitter more than profitable, so while it may shrink, it may besides stand the test of time.

2010 - Instagram

A late entry, Instagram was first launched in 2010. As we know, it was unique in that it specialized in photograph- and video-only posts, and information technology only allowed photos to be framed in a foursquare. Information technology was marketed at those with an interest in taking beautiful, artsy photos that they could share with their friends.

Instagram became an instant awareness. It reached one meg users only a few months after information technology launched, and information technology now more than 1 billion people are out at that place "doing information technology for the gram," making it one of the most popular social media sites in the unabridged world. In 2012, just ii years after launch, Facebook bought Instagram for around $1 billion. Today, were Instagram to stand lonely, it would take an estimated marketplace value of effectually $100 billion.

2011 - Snapchat

Another relative newcomer, Snapchat has been effectually since 2011. It is particularly popular amongst immature people, and it has a picayune under 200 million users. It's unique in that users can send each other photos that will disappear in simply seconds, and it likewise has the "24-hour story" option that gives people the chance to load up multiple photos every bit part of a story that lasts 24 hours.

The site has more than quadrupled its number of users in the past five years, and it was valued at $31 billion during its initial public offering in 2015. Still, this number has tumbled in contempo years every bit the company struggles to make a turn a profit. So, while it'due south certainly an of import part of social media today, it's possible it might but be a blip on the radar in the grand scheme of things.

Social Media Since 2011

When we expect at the history of social media with a wide angle lens, nosotros see an manufacture that needed the early 2000s to work itself out merely that by the mid 2000s had found its stride and was taking the world past storm. Nonetheless, the growth that took place between 2005 and 2011 saturated the market and fabricated it difficult for newcomers to find success.

Some notable social media sites to have launched during this flow from 2011 to the present include Vine, Tinder, and Google Plus, although Tinder falls more into the online dating niche.

Instead, the most significant things to come out of this flow of social media history are the growth of the major players (Facebook generates some $xl billion a year in revenue) also as the fall of several other sites that had once been prominent, such every bit MySpace and Friendster.

Social Media Around the World

However, possibly the most interesting affair to happen in the past 10 years of social media history is the growth of social media around the world. Originally confined to the US and Europe, social media is now a global miracle.

Websites such as WeChat and QZone accept get immensely pop in Prc, where Facebook and other social media sites are not immune to operate, and this had made them some of the nearly widely-used platforms in the world.Furthermore, as the internet spreads around South America, Asia, and Africa, more and more than people are using social media, a tendency we can expect to go along well into the future.

Determination

In but 22 years, social media has gone from being nothing more than a concept to an integral office of life. It has brought us together and fabricated information technology easier to communicate, simply it has likewise raised some interesting questions about privacy and liberty of voice communication. This means the conversations we have effectually these problems will very much determine the role social media plays in our lives moving forward.

Nevertheless, no matter what happens, information technology'southward like shooting fish in a barrel to come across how social media has changed our lives and how it volition go on to practise so well into the future.