The Historical development of social media

The Historical development of social media

 

Early Social Media

Technology changed the ways in which we as a society communicate. After the first computers were created during the 1940s, scientists and engineers began to develop ways to create networks between those computers, and this would later lead to the birth of the Internet. By the 1970s, networking technology had vastly improved, and 1979’s "UseNet" allowed users to communicate through a virtual newsletter. By the 1980s, home computers were becoming more common and social media was becoming more sophisticated. The first recognizable social media site, "Six Degrees", was created in 1997, it enabled its users to create a profile and become friends with other users. The year 1999 lead to the popularity of blogging, something that is still hugely popular today among social media users.

Social Media Today

After the invention and popularity of blogging, social media began to explode in popularity. Sites like "MySpace" and "LinkedIn" gained reputation in the early 2000s, sites like "Flickr" allowed its users to upload and share photos online. The innovative and highly successful social media site "YouTube" came out in 2005, creating an entirely new way for people to communicate and share videos with each other across great distances.

By 2006, two of the biggest social media sites, Facebook and Twitter, were available to users across the globe, causing probably the biggest explosion in the popularity of social media sites, after this, new social media sites started popping up to fill in specific needs that no other social media sites offered, sites such as Spotify are a good example of this, this site allows its users to stream the most popular music around but although sites like YouTube were already doing this, the creators of Spotify created Spotify Premium, allowing users to pay a small monthly fee of £10 per month to stream unlimited music with no ads, allowed users to choose specific songs to listen to, create playlists and allowed them to skip past songs they didn't want to hear. Spotify is now a huge, if not the biggest social media site for streaming music, this is because it's always innovating and bringing in new features such as cross-posting, this is a very popular feature of a large amount of social media sites because it allows you to link one social media account to another, for example, linking your Spotify account to your Facebook account, allowing you to let your friends know what music your listening to. If you would like to learn more on the topic of current developments in social media, you can have a look at Katie's post:- http://theacademicsinvesitgation.blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/current-developments-in-social-media.html

So where are we now? In terms of social media, we have came a long way from where it first began, rather than using long paragraphs an virtual letters to have conversations and get our points across, we are now at the point where we use images and videos with perhaps a small caption to communicate with others through social media. Rather than social media just being used by individuals, it is also used by businesses so they are able to market their products and services through data mining, this provides businesses with free advertising through people sharing their posts and trains younger people to become consumers. More information on this topic can be found through Caitlin's post:- http://theacademicsinvesitgation.blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/the-use-made-of-personal-data-by-social.html

In my opinion, social media is a great tool for both individuals, businesses and society as a whole and I'm certainly glad I'm a part of the generation that is surrounded by it, especially because of all the time it's had for developments to be made, it does have its downsides and negatives for both individuals and businesses, (more information on the risks for individuals and businesses can be found in one of my other posts http://theacademicsinvesitgation.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/the-dangers-of-social-media-to.html) I think the pros outweigh the cons.


If you'd like to learn more on this topic, you can follow any of these links:-

https://smallbiztrends.com/2013/05/the-complete-history-of-social-media-infographic.html