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AOL
Without AOL, who knows where the "internet" would be today, or how much it would cost. AOL was the start of so many titans of the tech industry and would even later go on to purchase the Huffington post. It is one of the few pre-.com era company's to still be operating today.
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Listserv
Email in itself was a huge deal when it was created in 1975, but Listserv allowed people to send the same email to multiple different people at once. This may not seem like a big deal now, but back in the 80s it was revolutionary.
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smartphones
weird to think this was the last one we added. Social media originally being made for desktops have now made an almost complete switch to smartphones with many platforms like Instagram, vine, and snapchat only being accessible on mobile. Even twitters UI on desktop looks more fit on mobile. The ability to be on social media at any time any where made usage skyrocket into a complete wave that has taken over society.
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Six Degrees
Six Degrees is considered one of the first social media sites. Created in 1997 by Andrew Weinreich it became a large stepping stone for social networking. Six Degrees introduced the idea of an online profile and the friends list, things commonly associated with Facebook. However, due to the lack of people with internet, Six Degrees didn't take off like they had hoped and was eventually sold in the year 2000.
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Microsoft vs netscape
Bill Gate's plan was to have Microsoft on every desktop across America, and they became extremely close. Microsoft used shady and illegal tactics to pull ahead of Netscape, and established a standard for system software. Without this battle between companies, the internet may have stayed as a professional feature for businesses rather than a day to day event for the every day person like TV
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LiveJournal
Livejournal is considered to be the first online blogging website allowing users to write about their daily lives as well as interacting with the blog posts of other users.
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Smartphone GPS
Although not a form of social media in itself, GPS and location updates changed the way social media was used. People no longer where uploading blog based stories or articles, but using social media purely as a life sharing platform. Posting where you were or doing location check-ins is something seemingly pointless but for some reason took social media by storm. This also was another outlet for marketers to explore.
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Napster
Napster started a boom across the world wide web of people uploading, sharing and downloading MP3's. Sadly it was extremely "illegal" and demanded the start to music copyright laws and modern day music licensing that we use today.
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Myspace
The popular social networking website of the early 2000's featured the same things as Six Degrees as well as the ability to blog, upload photos and videos, and for companies, or other public groups to create their own social page for other users to follow. Myspace was made the most popular social media site in 2006, and held that title until 2008 when Facebook rose to power
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Facebook
Created by Mark Zuckerburg, Facebook used to be only for Harvard students, but ever since Zuckerburg allowed world access it's been the most popular social media website with more than a billion users worldwide.
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YouTube
YouTube started out as a way to upload and share video content with other users, now it is one of the most used social media sites. This site has allowed users to have full time jobs through the site creating video content, created many of it's own original television series, and allows other companies to share content easily and effectively
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Twiiter
Although today twitter is a major form of social media, content creating and sharing, and news, it was originally made as a form of open messaging or sms messages. I believe twitter is a great example of how different social medias appeal to different groups and provide different experiences. facebook and twitter are used in very different ways despite appearing to be the same at a base level
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