Social media is basically a powerful tool that is used to connect millions of across the world.It allows people to share different perspectives,information,stories and experiences among online communities.
THEN AND NOW
The roots of social media stretch far deeper than you might imagine.Although it seems like a new trend,sites like Facebook are the natural outcome of many centuries of social media development.
The earliest means of communicating across long distance were letters(mails)which were delivered by hand from one person to another.In the year 1792,telegraph was invented.This allowed messages to be delivered across long distances faster than a horse rider could carry them.Although telegraph messages were short,they were a revolutionary way to convey news and information.However,both technologies are still in use today although the modern versions are much more sophisticated than their predecessors.Telephone lines and radio signals enabled people to communicate across great distances instantaneously,something that mankind had never experienced before.Technology began to change very rapidly in the 20th century.After the first super computers were created in the 1940's,scientists and engineers began to develop ways to create networks between those computers and this later lead to the birth of the internet.
Then AL GORE claimed to have taken the initiative of creating social media.The first recognizable social media site,
Six degrees was created in 1997.It enabled users to upload a profile and make friends with other users.In 1999, the first blogging sites became popular and this created a social media sensation that's still popular today.After the invention of blogging,Social media began to explode in popularity. Sites like
MySpace and
LinkedIn gained prominence in the early 2000's and sites like
photobucket and
Flickr facilitated online photo sharing.
YouTube came out in 2005,creating an entirely new way of communicating. By 2006,
Facebook and Twitter both became available to users throughout the world.These sites remain some of the most popular social networks on the internet.Other sites like
Tumblr,Spotify,Foursquare and Pinterest began popping up to fill specific social networking niches.Today,there is a tremendous variety of social networking sites and many of them can be linked to allow cross-posting.This creates an environment where users can reach the maximum number of people without sacrificing the intimacy of person-to-person communication.
We can only speculate about what the future of social networking may look in the next decade or even 100 years from now, but it seems clear that it will exist in some form for as long as humans are alive.
