Social Media - The Beginning of an Era




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Hello!

Today we're going to look at how the whole craze of social media began and a general history of how we got to where we are today. Nowadays we have Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Youtube and Instagram easily accessible to us. But people only ten years older than I am have had a completely different experience to me. So lets take a look back on some of the earliest social media, how they rose to fame and how they're doing at this current time.

The Original Social Media

Most sites agree that the first proper social media is SixDegrees. Now I have never heard of this social media before but it has a pretty similar concept to a current day Facebook. SixDegrees was launched in 1997 and it was based off of the concept of Six Degrees of Separation - stating that all things and people are connected by six or less 'links'. It allowed people to send messages to each other and put up posts, referred to as 'bulletin board items'. Both messages and posts are two things which are the basis for most social media; Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Instagram are just a few examples of this.

America Goes Online

Another original social media is AIM, America Online's Instant Messenger. Now AIM was much different to any of the modern social media. It was more of a message system than it was a social media, but it was definitely a popular social media. It's popularity peaked around the early 2000s and it gradually declined until this current day. It is still around right now but is nowhere near its former popularity. However, it did pave the way for other messenger based social media, such as MSN and the messaging system that has been implemented in countless social media, such as Twitter and Facebook.

There's one more original social media that I didn't touch on - Facebook. Now Facebook was an early social media but it provides us with much more information than just history, so stay tuned for a special casestudy on Facebook.

Stay connected.

~Matthew.


Information from sixdegrees.com, digitaltrends.com, aim.com, mashable.com