History of Social Media

          In today’s world, nearly everyone knows what social media is and many people use it every day. Some people consider social media as a relatively new trend, but it actually has been around longer than many people think. The first time that social media was introduced is not known to a lot of people because it was not instantly popular. So, when was the first time that social media was introduced to the world? The answer is 1997, which means that social media is celebrating its twentieth birthday this year! The world first got a glimpse at social media through a website called Six Degrees, named after something called the SixDegrees of Separation Theory. This web site only lasted four short years, but it paved the road for other social media to surface. After Six Degrees, we see blogging and instant messaging become popular and then we see ICQ and AOL, which both provided tools for chatting online. By the year 2000, it seemed as though the internet was everywhere, but the biggest boom that we see in the world of social media came about around the year 2003, with Myspace, which is considered as the original social media profile website.  Myspace is said to have inspired Facebook, and many musicians used Myspace to market themselves and their music. Another site that we see at the surge of social media popularity is LinkedIn, which was similar to Myspace, but geared at business professionals. Both Myspace and LinkedIn are still in use today. In 2005 Facebook, originally released to just Harvard students in 2004, was released to the world. By 2006, the popularity of text messaging inspired Twitter! In 2010 we start seeing other social media sprinkle in and now, by 2017, we have many more different applications available to us on computers, tablets, smartphones, televisions, and basically anything else that can connect to and access the internet!