Social Media: A Historical Timeline
- Christina A. Williams
- Aug 23, 2017
- 2 min read
."Social Media: A Social Timeline" [image]
Created by Christina A. Williams via Vizzlo.com
Social media, as it is currently viewed, creates a very different idea in the minds of its users from how it is historically considered. According to social media historians, any medium that has ever been used to transmit social messages falls under the umbrella of "social media", and the concept has drastically grown to a certain level of dependence on wireless internet on mobile devices as a platform for its accessibility.
According to Simeon Edosomwan (2016), the first form of social media was the telegraph in 1792. This medium was shortly followed by the telephone for reciprocal communication methods and the radio for one-way transmission of information to the public in the 1800s (Edosomwan, 2016). After the development of phone and radio transmission of messages, social media development died down until the mid-1900s.
The twentieth century saw an influx of social media forms starting in the 1950s with phone phreaking, which is described as "rogue searching of the telephone network" (Edosomwan, 2016). Then in the 1960s, email was developed, though it was not publicly accessible until the 1990s (Edosomwan, 2016). Time-sharing services were made available on computers through programs such as ARPANET and CompuServe in 1969 (Edosomwan, 2016), and computer technology began to develop on a larger scale, starting in 1970 (Edosomwan, 2016). In 1978, MUD for virtual gaming, and BBS for internet bulletin boards, were created (Edosomwan, 2016), and in 1979, Usenet was created to be similar to BBS, but only for the posting of news articles (Edosomwan, 2016).
The year 1980 was the beginning of "continuously operating virtual communities" like WELL, GEnie, Listserv, and IRC (Edosomwan, 2016). These programs facilitated group communication efforts, also allowing private communication efforts for those who chose to utilize the function (Edosomwan, 2016).
The 1990s was a decade in which an influx of social media platforms were developed. These platforms included Six Degrees, BlackPlanet, Asian Avenue, MoveOn, Blogger, Epinions, Third Voice, Napster, and Lunar Storm, which were used for various purposes such as personal interaction, networking, product reviews, commenting personal opinions, and file sharing (Edosomwan, 2016).
All of these functionalities continued into 2000 and the years to come, focusing more on common interests of the users, with the launch of social networking sites fotolog, skyblog, Friendster, Kolla, MySpace, LinkedIn, lastFM, tribe.net, and Hi5 (Edosomwan, 2016). The idea of social networking changed in 2004 with the introduction of Facebook Harvard, and most of the following sites displayed similar characteristics, functions, and focus with the idea of giving the user the ability to share any and everything at the center of it all (Edosomwan, 2016). These sites include Dogster and Mixi in 2004, Yahoo! 360, Youtube, and cyword in 2005, and Twitter in 2006 (Edosomwan, 2016).
Within the last 10 years, social networking sites Friend Feed, Ping.fm, Netlog, Facebox, Bingbox, and Google Buzz were introduced in 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010 (Maina, 2016). As the idea and habits of socializing continues to grow and develop, more social networking sites will continue to be launched and develop as well.
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References
Edosomwan, S. (2016). The history of social media and its impact on business. ResearchGate. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/303216233_The_history_of_social_media_and_its_impact_on_business.
Maina, Antony. (2016). 20 Popular Social Media Sites Right Now. smallbiztrends.com. Retrieved from https://smallbiztrends.com/2016/05/popular-social-media-sites.html.
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