A brief history of Social Media
Perspectives on the History of Social Media
The history of social media dates back to the very first social media site created in 1997 called Six Degrees. This platform was used up until 2001 and allowed the users that signed up for it to create profiles and add friends to share content with. Following Six Degrees, in 1999 social media moved towards a blogging trend. ICQ and aol instant messenger came after blogging which I remember all too well. I even remember my old aol username was manders61091. I was just the most creative teenager there ever was, I say in the most sarcastic voice possible right now. In the early 2000s, sites such as Photobucket and Flickr were created which allowed for online photo sharing. This was a very popular trend during that time period. YouTube launched in 2005 which was an entirely new platform and social media experience. YouTube allowed for people to create video content that they could share worldwide. This was great for musicians during that time as well. Flash-forward to now, people actually make a living off of YouTube by creating vlogs and content. Facebook and Twitter came shortly after YouTube in 2006 and still remain popular social media platforms today. Facebook is the most widely used social media platform with over 2.2 billion active users each month. Instagram who is owned by Facebook is a photo sharing application that launched in 2010 and has over 800 million active users each month. Other social media sites include: Twitter, Tumblr, Spotify, Foursquare and Pinterest. Social media is such a thriving and popular tool because it makes an environment where its users are able to reach a large number of people without sacrificing that intimate feeling of a typical one on one communication. “According to estimates, the number of worldwide social media users reached 2.34 billion and is expected to grow to some 2.95 billion by 2020.” (Percentage of U.S. population who currently use any social media from 2008 to 2017, 2018)
