History of Social Media Companies
Author: Push My Web
People have many natural predispositions and one of these is the urge to communicate with each other. Throughout the ages people have always found innovative ways to communicate with one another such as pigeons, light signals, posts, telegraph and telephone. In the past these means of communication were not effective and fast and if you really wanted to communicate with somebody you had to travel to meet that person. This urge to communicate and stay connected forced human beings to look for new and more effective ways to do it. This search for connectivity has lead us to the modern world of social media networking where everybody is connected with everybody.
Social media platforms had humble beginnings way back in 1971 with the first email being sent from one computer to another sitting right next to one another. The small message said "qwertyuiop" but who knew that this small message marked the start of so many things. The next step in the evolution of social media came with the creation of Bulletin Board System or BBS in 1978. The BBS was hosted on personal computers and let users interact with another through a very slow internet connection.
The next big step in social media happened in 1988 when instant messaging was born. Internet Relay Chat or IRC was an UNIX based system so it was limited to only a select group of people. Internet Relay Chat was used for communication purposes as well as link and file sharing services.
The first traces of the modern social media networks were created in 1994 with the creation of Geocities. Geocities was a revolution in its time as it allowed users to create and customize their own websites and grouped them into different "cities" based on the content of the website. TheGlobe.com was another step towards the future. TheGlobe.com allowed users to post their own content and connect with people with the same hobbies and interests.
AOL Instant Messenger and SixDegrees.com was launched in 1997. These two websites were the next revolution in the world of connected social media platforms. Both AOL Instant Messenger allowed the users to create profiles, write about themselves, chat with friends and to be found by others. Both of these sites were kind of advanced for its time. SixDegrees.com was gaining a lot of popularity but lost its momentum due to too many user drives and being filled with spam. SixDegrees.com was sold in 2001 for $125 million but was shut down the next year. Many sites followed suite and social media platforms such as Classmates, Friendzy and Hi-5 were created. Many sites were dating sites but other sites were more niche driven such as Classmates.
The first modern social networking site that resembles today's platforms is Friendster Friednster was basically found as a dating site but it offered more than that. As a result, Friendster became very popular and amassed 3,000,000 members in the first 3 months. The popularity of Friendster declined with the creation of MySpace as it gave users more freedom in customization of profile letting the users add music and videos. For a considerable amount of time MySpace was king of the social networking.
The spotlight was taken from MySpace by Facebook. Facebook came into the scene in 2004 with the intent to be a campus only social media network. Its popularity erupted after it was made public in 2008 and now it has more than 150 million registered users.
Now there are more than 600 social media companies in the world with Facebook being their king. Only time can now tell if social media is only a fad of the time or it will persist in the long run like search engines and mail servers.
Social media platforms had humble beginnings way back in 1971 with the first email being sent from one computer to another sitting right next to one another. The small message said "qwertyuiop" but who knew that this small message marked the start of so many things. The next step in the evolution of social media came with the creation of Bulletin Board System or BBS in 1978. The BBS was hosted on personal computers and let users interact with another through a very slow internet connection.
The next big step in social media happened in 1988 when instant messaging was born. Internet Relay Chat or IRC was an UNIX based system so it was limited to only a select group of people. Internet Relay Chat was used for communication purposes as well as link and file sharing services.
The first traces of the modern social media networks were created in 1994 with the creation of Geocities. Geocities was a revolution in its time as it allowed users to create and customize their own websites and grouped them into different "cities" based on the content of the website. TheGlobe.com was another step towards the future. TheGlobe.com allowed users to post their own content and connect with people with the same hobbies and interests.
AOL Instant Messenger and SixDegrees.com was launched in 1997. These two websites were the next revolution in the world of connected social media platforms. Both AOL Instant Messenger allowed the users to create profiles, write about themselves, chat with friends and to be found by others. Both of these sites were kind of advanced for its time. SixDegrees.com was gaining a lot of popularity but lost its momentum due to too many user drives and being filled with spam. SixDegrees.com was sold in 2001 for $125 million but was shut down the next year. Many sites followed suite and social media platforms such as Classmates, Friendzy and Hi-5 were created. Many sites were dating sites but other sites were more niche driven such as Classmates.
The first modern social networking site that resembles today's platforms is Friendster Friednster was basically found as a dating site but it offered more than that. As a result, Friendster became very popular and amassed 3,000,000 members in the first 3 months. The popularity of Friendster declined with the creation of MySpace as it gave users more freedom in customization of profile letting the users add music and videos. For a considerable amount of time MySpace was king of the social networking.
The spotlight was taken from MySpace by Facebook. Facebook came into the scene in 2004 with the intent to be a campus only social media network. Its popularity erupted after it was made public in 2008 and now it has more than 150 million registered users.
Now there are more than 600 social media companies in the world with Facebook being their king. Only time can now tell if social media is only a fad of the time or it will persist in the long run like search engines and mail servers.
Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/social-marketing-articles/history-of-social-media-companies-7210047.html
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