Historical Background of Social Media

Social media has become an integral part of all of our lives. We use it to connect with
friends and family, to catch up on current events, and, perhaps most importantly, to
entertain ourselves. This is why just under 70 percent of Americans, and more than 2.6
billion active users globally, use social networking sites.

The real history of social media starts in the 1970s with the emergence of the internet.
The internet has its roots in the 1960s and 1970s.  The idea that an average person
could log on to the internet and write about what they were thinking, feeling, doing, and
their personal news, and that these posts could be read by anyone at any time.

The first two social media platforms were Six Degrees and Friendster, both of which are
no longer around.

 “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” theory, is considered to be the first of the social networks
is because it allowed people to sign up with their email address, make individual
profiles, and add friends to their personal network. It was officially launched in 1997,
and it lasted until about 2001.

A few years later, in 2002, the site Friendster emerged to compete with Six Degrees.
Unlike Six Degrees, People could also share videos, photos, and messages with other
users, and they were also able to leave comments on other people’s profiles, so long as
they were part of each other’s personal network. Friendster was doomed to fail. In 2015,
it suspended all of its services, and on Jan. 1, 2019, it ceased all operations and
officially closed its doors.

In the era of 2000, LinkedIn, My Space was perhaps the most popular and influential
social media sites, connecting millions of active users all over the world, focused on
professional networking, allowing people to connect with business and school contacts,
as well as companies. In those days, Facebook was founded on February 4, 2004 by
Mark Zuckerberg, as well as Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollom, Dustin Moskovitz, and
Chris Hughes.  However, as Facebook began to expand beyond its initial audience of
just college students, MySpace and Linkdeln began to decline, and Facebook replaced
them as the top visited site in 2008.

Facebook started as a social media site exclusive to Harvard students, Ivy League, as
well as Stanford and MIT. However, after 2006, Facebook was available to anyone
claiming to be above the age of 13.
Others are Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat.Besides, the history of social media is a brief
yet tumultuous one, New companies will emerge, and, as people’s preferences change,
old ones will die or merge into something else, rewriting the history of social media as
they do.