If you think of it, fifty years ago, no one would have known of “Social Media”. But now, everyone knows about it. This term has become a common knowledge in society especially for the youngsters. It is not just limited to being some knowledge that generally goes unpractised, but is rather the most popular pursuit of this digital age. It is a new mode of entertainment and where people can share and exchange their thoughts (through what most of us know as posts / statuses), personal information, photos and other media. This media is apparently growing bigger and bigger every day with more and more people using it across the globe and also promoting the usage and its positive effects to the people they know in their circle.
New and more advanced social media platforms are created every year with more interesting things that can be offered to internet users. Now, to look at it, there are so many known and followed social media platforms like Blogger, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and more.
Let’s discuss a brief history of social media-
• In 1978, the first social media was created. Bulletin Board System (BBS) was created by Ward Christensen and Randy Suess to announce meeting and sharing information by posting it on BBS. It was the beginning of virtual community and the first dial-up in history.
• 1995 was the year for personal websites. After internet (WWW) launched and loved by many people, Geocities a web hosting service launched by Beverly Hills Internet (BHI). It allowed internet users to create simple websites for themselves.
• Social media service that appeared in 1997 was SixDegrees. SixDegrees lets its users to create profile and list of friends. It was used by 1 million users.
• 1999 was the year for Blogger and Livejournal. Users could write, share and communicate with friends by using their own blog or journal.
• Friendster was launched in 2002. It could be included in the social networking group. It lets users to create profile and virtual connection with people around the world. Now, Friendster has become a social media for games.
• Myspace, LinkedIn and WordPress were launched in the year 2003. Most of Myspace users were musician and band. WordPress was created to be used as open-source content management system and LinkedIn was launched as business-oriented social networking.
• In 2004, Mark Zuckerberg launched ‘Facebook’. In the beginning, Facebook was created as social networking for college students.
• YouTube was launched in 2005 and founded by former employees of PayPal Jawed Karim, Steve Chen and Chad Hurley. It is a social sharing that let users freely upload and share a video.
• Launched in 2006, Twitter is known as social networking and microblogging site. Users can share and exchange 140-character messages. This short messages are called as tweets.
• In 2011, Google launched new product of social networking, Google plus (Google+). Google plus let you have video chat (hangout) and exchange information.
• In 2012, the first social scrapbooking that gained 10 million users faster in history launched. This social scrapbooking, Pinterest helps you create and share album of photos.