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Samuel Morse’s first telegraph
A common starting point for the history of social media is Samuel Morse’s first telegraph, which he sent between Washington, D.C. and Baltimore in 1844. Of course it does not fit in with present definition of social media, but it was certainly a start for distance communication and connecting the United States. Retrieved from: History Cooperative -
Invention of Radio
The radio inventor Marconi became the first person to send wireless signals across the land. It broke new ground for the country. People all over the United States could hear the same news broadcast at the same time, and not only news, music and radio shows as well. Suddenly, there was a medium to develop a nation-wide culture. Retrieved from: The Great Courses Daily -
Start of the PLATO
PLATO (Programmed Logic for Automatic Teaching Operations) was the first generalized computer-assisted instruction system. Many modern concepts in multi-user computing were originally developed on PLATO, including forums, message boards, online testing, e-mail, chat rooms, picture languages, instant messaging and many others. Retrieved from: Wikipedia.com -
America Online
AOL (formerly a company known as AOL Inc. and originally known as America Online) is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City, launched in May 1985. Now it is owned by marketed by Verizon Media. Retrieved from: TIME -
ICQ
ICQ was created in 1996 by Mirabilis, an Israeli software company, which was acquired in 1998 by America Online, Inc. (AOL). ICQ was first available for PCs running Microsoft Corporation’s Windows OS and Apple Inc.’s Mac OS. It was originally a simple chat program, but it quickly grew in popularity. It supports audio and video chat, text messages to cellular telephones, e-mail, and file transfer.
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Six Degrees
The website is considered to be the “first social media” website. It allowed people to sign up with their email address, make individual profiles, and add friends to their personal network. It was officially launched in 1997, and it lasted until about 2001. It’s number of users peaked at around 3.5 million. Retrieved from: History Cooperative -
Tencent QQ
Tencent QQ is an instant messaging software service and web portal, extremely popular among young Chinese. QQ offers services like online social games, music, shopping, microblogging, movies, and group and voice chat software. It is the world's 5th most visited website, according to Alexa. At the end of June 2016, there were 899 million active QQ accounts.
Retreived from: Wikipedia -
Napster
Napster, founded by Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker, was an independent peer-to-peer file sharing service, allowing people to easily share their MP3 files with other participants. Due to the lack of control over the transfer of copyrighted material across its network, Napster's illegal operations were soon on the radar of the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) and had to shut down in 2001.
Retrieved from: lifewire.com -
Lunarstorm
LunarStorm was a Swedish commercial advertisement-financed social networking website for teenagers. It was operated by a company called LunarWorks. According to the company's official statistics, the website had 1.2 million members in 2007, of whom some 70% were 12–17 years old. LunarStorm was financed by banners and other advertising on the website, but this soon evolved to include more of pay-by-SMS services.
Retrieved from: Wikipedia -
Friendster
Friendster, launched by Jonathan Abrams and Peter Chin in March 2002, emerged to compete with Six Degrees. Like Six Degrees, it allowed users to sign up with their email address, make friends, save them as part of a personal network, as well as share videos and photos, message with other users and leave comments on other people’s profiles. It reached over one hundred million users.
Retrieved from: lovetoknow.com -
LinkedIn
LinkedIn was founded on December 28, 2002 by Reid Hoffman, Allen Blue, Konstantin Guericke, Eric Ly, and Jean-Luc Valliant. The site's focus in on professional networking, allowing people to connect with business and school contacts, as well as companies. Currently, LinkedIn has more than 575 million registered users, and it’s ranked number 285 on the Alexa Ranking for most-visited sites. Retrieved from: Wikipedia -
MySpace
Launched in 2003, MySpace quickly became the largest social media site in the world. It started as a file storage platform, but quickly transitioned to an online social network, known for bands' pages, customizable profiles and a culture of online stalking. It was the no.1 website in 2006 and was valued at $12 billion in 2007. In 2008 it lost its dominance to Facebook.
Retrieved from: History Cooperative -
Facebook
Facebook is a social media and technology company, founded by Zuckerberg, Saverin, Moskovitz and Hughes. Initially exclusive to Harvard students, after 2006 it became available to anyone claiming to be above 13 y/o. It acquired Instagram, WhatsApp, and Oculus, and developed Messenger, Watch, and Portal. Currently, it has over 2.3 billion active users and is considered one of the most important tech companies in the world. Retrieved from: Wikipedia -
YouTube
YouTube was created by three PayPal employees - Hurley, Chen, and Karimas, as a video-sharing website where users could upload, share and view content. The Internet domain name "www.youtube.com" was activated on February 14, 2005.
On November 13, 2006, it was purchased by Google for US$1.65 billion in stock. It has over 2 billion monthly users who watch hours of content every single day. Retrieved from: businessinsider.com -
Reddit
Reddit, also known as the front page of the Internet, is an American social news aggregation, web content rating, and discussion website. The platform allows users to submit questions, links, and images, discuss them, and vote them up or down.
As of July 2019, Reddit ranks as the no. 5 most visited website in the U.S. and No. 13 in the world, according to Alexa.
Retrieved from: Wikipedia buffer.com -
Twitter
Twitter is an American microblogging and social networking service created by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams. Users post and interact with messages known as "tweets". It distinguished itself by limiting users to only 140 characters (a policy it held onto until 20170. Today, it has around 335 million monthly active users.
Retrieved from: Wikipedia History Cooperative -
Instagram
Instagram was launched on October 6, 2010 by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger. It focused exclusively on video and photos, and by only allowing photos to be framed in a square (a restriction which was lifted in 2015).
Currently, it has 1 billion active users, which makes it the sixth most popular social media site in the world. Retrieved from: History Cooperative -
Snapchat
Snapchat was launched by Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy, and Reggie Brown in September 2011. Its distinguishing feature is allowing users to send photos to one another that would disappear shortly after being opened.
Today, Snapchat also allows people to chat with one another as well as share a “24-hour story,” Currently, it has around 186 million active users. Retrieved from: History Cooperative
