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Founded by Andrew Weinreich in 1996 and created in 1997, Six Degrees allowed users to create a profile and interact with their friends, a feat that may not seem as impressive to people today as it was in the 90's. Although Six Degrees had many registered users, it failed due to the lack of people connected to the internet. http://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/then-and-now-a-history-of-social-networking-sites/2/
http://smallbiztrends.com/2013/05/the-complete-history-of-social-media-infographic.html -
Before Wikipedia, there was Nupedia, a free online encyclopedia created by Jimmy Wales and Lawrence Sanger. Nupedia planned to have expert-written, peer-reviewed content. In theory, it was a great idea, but in practice it was too time consuming to be productive. To spur productivity, Sanger created Wikipedia, a counterpart that allowed people to contribute without editoral review. http://content.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1917002,00.html
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In August of 2003, Myspace was founded by a few employees from an internet marketing firm, eUniverse. Myspace was a popular social network site that allowed users to connect with friends and launch their music careers. Myspace peaked in December of 2008 but was soon overshadowed by competing social media sites. http://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/then-and-now-a-history-of-social-networking-sites/7/
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2011-06-22/the-rise-and-inglorious-fall-of-myspace -
Mark Zuckerburg founded Facebook for fellow Harvard students. Due to the popularity of it, the network was extended to all academic institutions. In September 2006, Facebook was extended beyond academic institutions and made available to anyone with a registered e-mail. Today, Facebook is the most popular social media site. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2007/jul/25/media.newmedia
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LinkedIn was founded in 2002 and launched in 2003 by Reid Hoffman and a team of colleagues that he chose from his previous careers. LinkedIn was designed as a professional platform used connect employers and colleagues. Although today LinkedIn is a successful social media site, it took LinkedIn nearly 3 years to reach profitability. http://www.ted.me/the-history-of-linkedin/
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"just setting up my twtter", Co-founder, Jack Dorsey tweeted on March 21, 2006, beginning a revolution. Twitter was created by three programmers: Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, and Biz Stone as a microblogging platform in 2006. Not unlike any other creators, the programmers did not expect the popularity Twitter would get. Today, Twitter is a huge marketing platform for businesses, and the "to go" place for news and politics. http://socialnomics.net/2013/01/23/the-history-of-twitter/
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Wikileaks was created by activist, Julian Assange for the purpose of "...disseminating original documents from anonymous sources and leakers." Assange's philosophy is "in opposition to what he calls secrecy-based, authoritarian conspiracy governments, in which category he includes the US government and many others not conventionally thought of as authoritarian." https://www.technologyreview.com/s/421949/everything-you-need-to-know-about-wikileaks/
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Tumblr was founded in February of 2007 by David Karp. Karp founded Tumblr because he wanted a blogging platform that was, "...much more free-form, much less verbose." in 2013, Yahoo bought The social media site. https://techcrunch.com/2011/02/21/founder-stories-why-david-karp-started-tumblr-blogs-dont-work-for-most-people/
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After Michael Jackson died, Twitter servers crashed after users sent 100,000 tweets per hour. This was nearly a doubling of tweets per second the instant the story broke. This shows how fast news can spread over social media. http://www.mtv.com/news/1614812/michael-jacksons-death-overloads-google-twitter/
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/money/death-king-pop-singer-michael-jackson-stumped-google-crashed-twitter-article-1.373444 -
As street protestors threaten to topple Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian government shuts down the internet in Egypt, preventing the protestor's communication. This is an example how social media can be used as a tool to spread activism. Feminist bloggers do similar things in India. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/29/technology/internet/29cutoff.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/egypt/8288163/How-Egypt-shut-down-the-internet.html
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In September 2011, Evan Spiegel created Snapchat from an idea that he and a few of his friends had while attending Stanford University. Snapchat was created with the idea that memories are temporary, and marketed to the youth. In just over a year of launching, Snapchat grew exponentially with 10 million active users. It continues to add new features and grow in size. https://www.garyvaynerchuk.com/the-snap-generation-a-guide-to-snapchats-history/
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On April 1st, hundreds of Tumblr bloggers changed their profile pictures to Supernatural star. Misha Collins. This phenomenon was referred to as the "Mishapocalypse". http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/mishapocalypse
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Youtube was created after the three founders- Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim realized that a user-friendly video sharing platform did not exist. At the time, they were creating a dating site which would allow users to upload videos of themselves, but the concept was failing. Although the concept was failing, they had a video uploading platform that was sound, thus, they created Youtube. https://phrasee.co/the-history-of-youtube/
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