The digital world moves fast. Each day a new, app, feature, or function is born. But have you ever sat and thought about the evolution of social media as a whole? Here's a quick refresher, featuring some forgotten old friend(ster)s.
Anyone remember Six Degrees? Personally, I don’t. But it was real – and fairly innovative. Created back in 1997, SixDegrees.com was the very first social media site. Similar to current social media platforms, its users uploaded a personal profile and made “friends” across the network. From this, the instant messaging program ICQ was created – I’m sure we can then all remember America Online’s instant messenger. [Insert screeching and dial up noise here.]( GIF Credit: Giphy)
By 2000, roughly 100 million people had access to the Internet. A big number, but definitely was not comparable to today’s online masses. Chat rooms quickly became hugely popular. Friendster launched in 2002, which many of the same or similar features as SixDegrees, but users were only allowed to connect if they had the same “interests.” The platform had a good 2-3 years, but had way too many technical difficulties, resulting in a huge drop in users. Fun Fact: Friendster lives on in 2017 — as an online gaming site.
We can all thank * drum roll please * MySpace for today’s knowledge, passion and love for social media. MySpace allowed many users to connect with friends, family, and like-minded souls – with one key innovation: it let you design your own profile. It also let musicians share their music (Platinum-seller Colbie Caillat got her start here, for instance). There was something in the air in 2003 – most of the social networks we have today, such as LinkedIn, launched in 2003.
In 2004, Mark Zuckerberg introduced Facebook (TheFacebook.com back then) his fellow Harvard students. The platform exploded and now is one of the most well known social media networks, with more than a billion users.
Inspired by text messaging, Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, Noah Glass and Evan Williams created Twitter, a “micro-blogging” platform that limited individual messages to 140 characters. Small character counts turned into a BIG platform: Twitter currently has 310M monthly active users and 1.3 billion accounts.
At about this time, businesses really caught on to the social media trend and jumped on the bandwagon in a full-fledged way, using various platforms as a way of marketing, as paid support and consulting increased. Today, there are more than a dozen social platforms that business uses as a way to push out their product. (GIF Credit: Giphy)
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