What is the History of Social Media?
Social media has had a part of the daily lives of teens. Today, a normal teen can “like” their friend’s post on Facebook, send out a tweet on Twitter, and send a photo to a friend for at most ten seconds on Snapchat, to name a few. Schools today, in addition, have begun to incorporate technology and the use of social media, for example Google Drive and Blogger, in classes to help students learn new material. Social media allows teens to connect and collaborate with other teens and even experience a lifestyle different from theirs. However, social media has been around before the 21st century, to the days when our own parents were teens.
First Instance of Social Media:
Between different people and websites, the first instance of social media varies between them. Social media can have different interpretations, resulting in pinpointing the “first instance” of social media being difficult to interpret. According to the Digital Trends Staff, the first instance of social media started with the Bulletin Board System or BBS for short in 1978, an online meeting place where people could download items, such as games or files, and post messages to other users (The History) while another site, We Are Social Media, has the first instance as the first email being sent by researchers at the Advanced Research Projects Agency, or ARPA, in 1971 (Desreumaux). |
However, the first “true” instance of social media, according to the definition of social media, would be PLATO in 1960. PLATO was an online education system that later evolved to have message boards, chat rooms, and instant messaging (Hernandez).
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Here is a brief and short overlook at social media throughout the years:
To learn more about the history of social media, check out these websites:
Digital Trends Wired WeRSM (Brief) WeRSM (Long)
- 1969: CompuServe and ARPANET was launched. CompuServe allowed users to be able to have “true interaction” and be able to share files and access news and events. ARPANET was developed by ARPA and was a network that would become the basis for the Internet today.
- In 1973, Efrem Lipkin, Mark Szpakowski, and Lee Felsenstein developed the Community Memory Terminal. This terminal was a database where users could look through roommate-wanted signs, for sale items, and status updates to name a few.
- 1994; Justin Hall, a student at Swarthmore college, starts Justin’s Links from Underground, the first personal blogging.
- 1995: Classmates.com, a website that allowed former classmates from elementary, high school and college to reconnect with each other. Today, it has about 57 million accounts and users.
- 1997: America Online, more commonly known as AOL, allowed users to talk in real time. AOL still exist today.
- 1999: Two more early blogging sites, LiveJournal and Blogger, allowed people to communicate with friends and family. Today, Blogger is also used in schools.
- 2001: Inspired by the 9/11 attack, Scott Heiferman launched Meetup.com which allows people to organize meetings based on common interests. Today, 340,000 groups meetup every month to socialize, eat, and connect with each other.
- 2003: Two major social media sites, LinkedIn and MySpace, were launched. LinkedIn, to this day, allows business people connect with other professionals and has 297 million members. MySpace was the most popular social media site (until Facebook) that appealed to teens with music, although the number of users has dropped and is now for musicians.
- 2004: (The)Facebook was launched by Mark Zuckerberg for Harvard Students and later became public in 2006. In 2009, Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel invested millions of money into the site. As of 2012, they have 1 billion users and have acquired Instagram and the Oculus VR in the following years.
- 2006: Twitter was launched and allows users to send out 140 character “Tweets” to large groups. As of 2012, it has 500 million users.
- 2007: Tumblr, a short blog site where users could easily share photos, quotes, and links, was launched.
- 2010: Instagram, an app that allows users to share images with other users, was launched. Since it was launched, 20 billion images have been posted.
To learn more about the history of social media, check out these websites:
Digital Trends Wired WeRSM (Brief) WeRSM (Long)