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51 BCE
Cicero's Web
In the year 51 B.C., Marcus Tullius Cicero was appointed to be regional governor of a province called Cilicia, which was unfortunately far from Rome considering Cicero's need to constantly be in the loop of Rome's continuous growth. Because of this, Cicero started a network of letters he and his colleagues would write amongst each other to keep up on the news and hubbub of the city. This was coined Cicero's Web, and is considered to be the first form of social media. -
Samuel Morse and the Telegraph
Much later, Samuel Morse invented the telegraph, which was a new way to send letters far more easily and quickly than had ever been possible. Morse sent a telegraph from Washington D.C. to Baltimore on May 24th of 1844, changing the history of communication forever. -
Social Media in the Military
Social media was first introduced to the United States Military in 1969 when a group called the ARPAN, or the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network, wanted to be able to connect Universities involved in the Military via a "proto-internet" called ARPANET. This was the first documented form of some type of internet, and ARPAN successfully sent over a total of two letters - "LO" - over this proto-internet. -
The Birth of Social Sites
In 1997, the website that is considered to be credited as the "first form of social media" was created. This site, called Six Degrees, was named after the "6 degrees of separation" theory which states that each individual in the world is connected to every other individual by no more than six degrees of separation alone. The site enabled individuals to make their own profiles and put other users on their network, and lasted until the early 2000s in the year 2001. -
Friendster
Friendster was the second website considered to be social media, and was the first competitor of Six Degrees. This website launched on March 22, 2002 shortly after Six Degrees fizzled out, and enabled users to social network in similar ways. In June 2011, the website turned itself into a gaming-type website and disabled all social accounts. -
LinkedIn
LinkedIn, one of the most popular social networks still existing for networking with individuals in one's field of work, was created and launched in the year 2003 shortly after Friendster by founders Reid Hoffman, Konstantin Guericke, and Jean-Luc Vaillant. LinkedIn is still growing, thriving, and in use today. -
Facebook
In February of 2004, arguably the biggest social media site in the world thus far was launched by Mark Zuckerberg: Facebook. This site was the game changer for social medias in enabling users to interact with their network of "friends" in a whole new slew of ways, and is still going strong today at nearly 2.5 billion active users. This social media site paved the way for social media interfaces such as Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest, and many others that are active today.
