Evolution of Social Media
Social media has become a significant part of our lives. It has changed how we communicate with one another, stay connected and disseminate information. The evolution of socials has come a long way in only a short amount of time, starting from simple systems of information-sharing to now more complex structures that are flawlessly intertwined in our everyday routines.
Innovation, adaption and transformation are some of the constant themes that have been seen in the evolution of social media. What started as basic chatrooms, email and bulletin board messaging is now evolving into its own immersive universe... or metaverse as it's been called.
Chatrooms and bulletin board systems made their first appearance in the late 70's. These systems were text-based platforms that people would use to converse with one another in real time. These could be seen in early internet services like AOL Instant Messenger and Yahoo Messenger. Users would interact on these databases to share information based on mutual interests. It is important to note that the early social media sites were very simplistic in their interface. Unlike today's social media, the pages were mainly text and had limited multimedia content, such as images and videos.
As the upgrades continued, social media moved along into the transition of Web 2.0, where social media was becoming based on more user-generated content. Gone were the days of the web being read-only. Websites became hubs where people could collaborate, create and share. This marked a huge shift in the future of social media.
This era was also marked by the emergence of blogging platforms services, like Blogger (what I use) and WordPress. These platforms allow users to create blogs on various topics and personal interests that spread to a global audience. The rise of content creation and content creators set the basis for what we see in influencer marketing today.
While blogging was on the rise, we also started to see the birth of social networking sites. Sites like MySpace were hubs where users could customize their profiles and connect with friends all over the world. Through profile customization on MySpace users were able to personalize layouts and showcase their interests with media such as music and photos. The site gained quick popularity among artists and musicians due to its ability to self-promote. MySpace essentially set the tone for what will become one of the biggest social networking sites, Facebook.
In 2004, Mark Zuckerberg and his roommate at Harvard created Facebook as a way for college students to stay connected to one another but quickly gained momentum outside of the academic world. A couple of years later, the platform was opened to the public, marking the beginning of a global superiority. At the same time that Facebook opened publicly, Twitter was also introduced to the world.
Twitter was revolutionary in the way users could microblog by using 140-character statuses that would populate in real-time. Twitter used hashtags and introduced the world to retweeting, which enabled information to be spread or go viral instantaneously.
In the late 2000s and early 2010s, smartphones started shifting towards a mobile-first approach to social media and their platforms. Social media users now have the power of the internet and interconnectivity right by their sides. Communication on the go and staying in the know was not a problem. Mobile apps began to be the main source of how people would access socials, forcing sites to become more mobile-friendly and have more optimized interfaces for mobile. Apps like Instagram and Snapchat saw this and decided to capitalize on the mobile-first approach to social media.
Instagram was launched in 2010, where the platform prioritized mobile visual content by having users share photos through feeds using aesthetically pleasing filters. A year later, Snapchat introduced the world to sharing on social media by having stories. Snapchat was innovative by using the concept of filters and using immersive technology, and geofilter to give users a unique experience.
The previously mentioned platforms continued to upgrade and make innovative changes to their site, while other new socials came and faded away as well. However, a short-form video platform was launched in mid-2010, called TikTok, that started slowly but revolutionized social sharing.
Now, social media has recently stepped into what is called the metaverse, which is essentially a virtual reality space inside social platforms. The metaverse combines virtual and augmented reality. The journey into social media is an ever-changing and nonstopping one. The future of social media will continue to be dynamic and an ongoing one that will shape the digital world around us. From starting on basic information sharing to moving past Web 2.0 and now entering the metaverse, I am very excited to see what is the next big thing for social sharing and social media platforms.
Source:
https://www.proquest.com/openview/92a27d7460667a0d79b2084328a15deb/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=28211
Hello Jai,
ReplyDeleteSocial media has come a long way. I found it interesting to read your blog, as I missed out on much of the earlier "social media". I use instant messaging daily at work, and even when we are away from work. When I started social media it was a way to keep in contact with my friends and family who had moved away from the area. Today, I have as many group connections as I do personal. I am able to reach out to other fitness professionals from all over the world. These are people I could have only met at expos or festivals.
Bloggers are becoming more and more prominent in todays society. I believe the Covid lockdown gave people a chance to spread their technological wings to stay in contact and in the loop. Between blogging and social media people have found a platform where they can share their opinions and experiences. This also allows for the average person to find plenty of information on a topic and and come to their own conclusions based on such. Great post.