Social media is part of everyone’s life; from the CEO to the housewife, every man and his dog has a Facebook page to connect with family and friends. The term ‘social media’ is indeed a broad one; humans have always had a need to connect and have done in many different ways, yet for the purpose of this article, we refer to digital social media.
- 1940s –1960s – Post WWII saw basic computers emerge, which would be the platform for social content to be shared, with the first localise network, CompuServe, arrived in the 1960s. Who would have thought we would end up with a huge social media gathering and with Facebook Ads Services from Move Ahead Media, your business can generate a huge social media following.
- The Internet – The World Wide Web arrived in the early 70s, albeit in a very basic and limited way, it was now possible to post data that other users can digitally view. Usenet enabled users to communicate with online newsletters and blogs and this continued to develop through to the 80s.
- 1980s – 1990s – Enter social media programs, where users register and create a profile; top programs were GENie and The Well, which as built for General Electric. Then Listserv came onto the scene, a mailing list where you could send emails to multiple users and in 1988, we saw IRC, Internet Relay Chat spring up, which enabled file sharing. The end of this decade saw the creation of Six Degrees, the very first social media website that allowed users to upload profile images and connect with other users. Click here if you want to learn how to write the perfect business plan.
- 2000 – 2010 – LunarStorm was launched in 2000, which was an ad-financed social networking web platform; aimed at teenagers, the site has 1.2 million users by 2007 and it closed down 3 years later. 2001 saw the arrival of Wikipedia, which aimed to allow used to edit the content, which was a first and the impact of this platform was enormous in many ways, although today, some of the pages are locked and you cannot be sure the information is correct. This was a booming decade for social media with giants like LinkedIn, YouTube, MySpace and WordPress emerging onto the scene.
- Facebook – In 2006, Facebook was born; what has now become the social media king started life as a platform for university students and quickly gained popularity and under the guidance of Mark Zuckerberg, this corporation grew exponentially to become the number 1 social media platform that we all know and love.
- Twitter – Also started in 2006, this iconic brand become a cult, as it allowed users to connect directly with celebrities, which was a first. Of course, Twitter was recently sold to Elon Muck for a whopping $44 billion, making it one of the most successful companies of all time.
Social media is continuing to evolve and the Metaverse is the next logical step and who knows where that will lead?
Know more: What Everyone Must Know About Keyhole Social Media Monitoring?
