My View On Social Media's History!
Have you ever shared something online because you found it funny? Perhaps you've posted a photo so your family and friends on the other side of the world can see and feel like they are right there with you. Perhaps you're feeling bored and made a status update to tell your friends incase one of them is in the same boat as you, bet you'd like that! These are all factors of today's social media networking capabilities. Just a few of the core components of the socio-technical system that makes up the likes of your favourite social media platform.
Social media is defined as being electronic tools available to help connect, communicate and collaborate people. Social Media is now days a massive part of our daily lives. When you think of social media, do you naturally think about facebook or Instagram? Perhaps twitter or maybe even Snapchat. These are all the current channels/platforms we all use almost on a daily basis.
How did social media become what it is known to be today? We all know how its shaped our world, we live in it. Never the less, an out of this world history time line lesson on how social media came to be is below, pull your socks up ladies and gentleman, you're in for a bumpy ride!
Let me ask you a question, what were you doing in 1980?
In the 80's, slowly but surely computers were becoming more common and social media was beginning to take shape. Roughly 1988 we ended up with Internet chat capabilities which evolved into the early 90's.
In the 1980's, I wasn't even around. You know what was around? SixDegrees.com. The ideology around the name is based on fact that you are only ever 6 degrees away or separation from everyone. You can read more on that by clicking here. Essentially, somehow, somewhere we are all connected, so the SixDegree's platform enables people connect in one place from those different locations no matter where you are in the world in real time.
SixDegrees gained over a million users rapidly however didn't last long as its arrival was a tad premature and people also weren't ready to share such personal information publically.
SixDegrees shut down 3 years later in the year 2000 due to this problem.
During the death of SixDegrees, other platforms like LinkedIn and MySpace were being built. In the early 2000's these platforms gained traction and people were slowly beginning to be okay with sharing their information. Following them was the likes of YouTube in 2005. It was the year 2006 when Twitter and Facebook were introduced. From then, those sites have grown exponentially. This promoted the birth of more specified platforms like Spotify for music, Pinterest for your photos. These are social media sharing platforms for a very specific niche.
Blogs, Social Networking sites and Wikis, these are now known 17 years later as "The Big Three" and have proven their longevity by all still being around.
Thinking back to your childhood, did you have a social media account?
Where is that platform now?
For me it was Bebo. The good old days of where a simple thing such as a new skin on your profile was the biggest and coolest deal!
LIKE/SHARE/COMMENT - Please do one of them if your a bebo veteran like me!
Thanks for viewing my blog, until next time!
Brok Milligan
16092592
I'd absolutely love your feedback. Please by all means be harsh. Yes, design wise I can make it look pretty. However content wise, never blogged properly before in my life!
All a learning game, never the less we're all in the same boat or in this case the same paper!
PLEASE NOTE: This is a blog for the purpose of a Massey University paper and is part of an assignment.