History of Social Media

Where it all started

Our History

Social Media is a phenomenon that has developed over time. In similar regards to the PC; the developmental stages of SM were basic and have become increasingly complex.The History section only covers to Facebook; because arguably it is the archetype for every other spin off platform.
1960s - 1990s

Rapid Growth of Internet

However, it wasn’t until the 1980s, and really the 1990s, that personal computers became more normal, which set the stage for the emergence of social media. Additionally, the emergence of blogging in the 1990s helped usher in the age of social media. The idea that an average person could log on to the internet and write about what they were thinking, feeling, and doing, and that these posts could be read by anyone at any time, and responded to, helped people begin to understand the full significance of the internet.

1997-2001

Six Degrees

The website credited as being the “first social media” site is Six Degrees. It’s named after the “six degrees of separation” theory, which states that everyone in the world is connected to everyone else by no more than six degrees of separation. The reason Six Degrees is considered to be the first social media site is because it allowed people to make individual profiles and add others to their personal network. It was officially launched in 1997, and it lasted until about 2001. It’s number of users peaked at around 3.5 million. It was bought out by YouthStream Media Networks in 1999 for $125 million, but it shut down just one year later.

2002 - 2019

Friendster

The site Friendster emerged to compete with Six Degrees. Like Six Degrees, it allowed users to make contacts and save them as part of a personal network. 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. A few months after its launch, Friendster had over 3 million users, and this number continued to grow, eventually reaching over one hundred million. In 2011, Friendster was rebranded as a social gaming site that was focused mainly on the gaming community. This helped it stay relevant alongside competitors such as Google, Yahoo!, and Facebook, but in the end, 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.

2002 - Present

LinkedIn

Surprisingly, LinkedIn was one of the first social media sites in history. It was founded on December 28, 2002 by Reid Hoffman, Allen Blue, Konstantin Guericke, Eric Ly, and Jean-Luc Valliant. Initially, it was a site focused on professional networking, allowing people to connect with business and school contacts, as well as companies. Today, this is still the primary purpose of LinkedIn. It has stayed true to that purpose to this day. Currently, LinkedIn has more than 575 million registered users, and it’s ranked number 285 on the Alexa Ranking for most-visited sites.

2003 - Present

Myspace

Of the original batch of social media sites, MySpace was perhaps the most popular and influential. Launched on August 1, 2003, MySpace quickly became the largest social media site in the world. It started as a file storage platform, but it quickly transitioned to a social network, which contributed to its meteoric rise in popularity.In 2006, MySpace surpassed Google as the top visited website in world.MySpace continued to grow, and by 2009 it was generating around $800 million in revenue, making it one of the more profitable social media sites out there. However, as Facebook began to expand beyond its initial audience of just college students, MySpace began to decline, and Facebook replaced it as the top visited site in 2008.However, MySpace, despite its decline, continues to operate to this day. In 2016, it was bought out by Time Inc., and in 2018 it was bought again by the Meredith Corporation. Currently, it’s still ranked 4,153 on the Alexa ranking of most visited sites in the world.

2004 - Present

Facebook

Facebook was founded on February 4, 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, as well as Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollom, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes.After its launch and subsequent expansion, Facebook grew quickly, surpassing MySpace in 2008 as the most visited site in the world. Today, it ranks #3 on the Alexa traffic rankings, behind only Google and YouTube. Facebook went public in 2012 and it received a valuation of $104 billion, making it one of the highest IPO valuation’s of all time. It currently generates over $40 billion a year in revenue, and it is considered as one of the most important tech companies in the entire world. Currently, Facebook has just over 2.3 billion active users, a number that has grown consistently since its launch. This amounts to just under 30 percent of the entire global population.

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