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The telegraph gains popularity
The telegraph was the first way to electronically send written messages. Each letter was communicated with a series of taps and pauses in a code developed by Samuel Morse. With its predecessor being the printing press, the telegraph took over rather slowly. It depended on wires running from each end of the line, which made it difficult to expand the network across the country. Even then, the telegraph became nearly essential for long-distance communication. Madison Rowell -
First Video Game
William Higinbotham devised the first true video game called “Tennis for Two”. It was played on a Brookhaven National Laboratory oscilloscope. Jacob Glavickas -
The CTSS project at MIT
The Compatible Time-Sharing System was the first operating system that had the capacity to be accessed from multiple locations at the same time. It was an early form of email. Each user had access to a directory and a file system. Users could share files with messages for each other from separate terminals. Eventually the “write” function was added so a user could send a one-line message directly to another user who was logged on. Madison Rowell -
Invention of Esports
The earliest known video game competition took place on October 19, 1972 at Stanford University for the game Spacewar. Stanford students participated in an “Intergalactic spacewar olympics” competing for prizes like a year’s subscription to Rolling Stone magazine Jacob Glavickas -
BBS creates the idea of message boards
Bulletin Board Systems allowed users to post messages and view posts from other users. Users needed a modem and a phone line in order to connect to the BBS. Users could chat with each other, and even play online games. The FidoNet BBS came out around the same time the internet became publicly available. FidoNet gave users more power and accessibility to send emails and files. Around 1995, advancements in internet technology made BBS obsolete. Madison Rowell -
Instant messaging & the first online chat rooms
Internet Relay Chat was the first messenger system to hit the market. These chat rooms were more synchronized than email, and they also had friend lists for users to make connections. Yahoo Messenger and MSN Messenger later followed. These platforms are what made Emojis popular. Blackberry brought advantages to instant messaging on mobile phones. Unlike SMS, Blackberry didn’t limit characters, and it had “delivered” and “read” receipt features. Madison Rowell -
The advent of text messaging
The first SMS message ever sent said “Merry Christmas.” Early cell phones didn’t have keyboards, so it was typed on a computer. Nokia released the first mobile phone that had text messaging abilities in 1993, and the first phone with a keyboard in 1997. Texting does not rely on an internet connection, so it has more portability. Madison Rowell -
First Video Game Streamed
The popularity of live streaming video games began with WSBN, a shoutcasting station streaming a competitive Starsiege Tribes match via Windows Media Encoder to approximately 50 people in 2001. Jacob Glavickas -
The Launch Of "TheFacebook"
In 2004, Mark Zuckerberg and a couple of his college friends launched “TheFacebook,” which was originally a platform where Harvard college students were able to connect with each other. In the same year, the site expanded to other colleges, allowing those students to connect with each other as well. Olivia Hunter -
Creation of Youtube
Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim release Youtube with the original idea of the founders was to create a platform for sharing “home videos” Jacob Glavickas -
The Creation of Twitter
Twitter was launched on March 21, 2006, by Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams. In its early days, Twitter was referred to as tweet. At the time, a popular trend, sometimes to gain a domain-name advantage, was to drop vowels in the name of their companies and services. Quinten McKee -
The First Hashtag
The use of hashtags was first proposed by American blogger and product consultant Chris Messina in a 2007 tweet.The hashtag was initially used to group tweets by topic and make them more discoverable 1. Since then, hashtags have become an integral part of Twitter and are now used on other social media platforms. Quinten McKee -
Social media sites introduce PMs (later DMs)
Facebook introduced Facebook Chat, which later turned into Facebook Messenger, which allows users to directly message each other on the Facebook site. Other social media sites like Twitter (now X) and Instagram followed suit soon after. DMs are a significant part of the Snapchat platform. Private messaging was later renamed to Direct Messaging, although the terms are often interchangeable. Madison Rowell -
The Like Button
By 2009, “TheFacebook” had become just Facebook and was also opened to all individuals over the age of 13. Features such as the Facebook Wall and News Feed had also been added, and in 2009, the Like button was born. Olivia Hunter -
Various Improvements
Over the years, it has evolved with various updates, including the introduction of features like the retweet button in 2009 and moments in 2015. The founder Jack Dorsey thought the retweet button "would elevate voices from under-represented communities". Previously people had to manually retweet each other by copying text and typing RT and the name of the tweeter but once the process was automated, retweeting meant popular posts quickly went viral. Quinten McKee -
Creation of Twitch
Twitch the popular video live-streaming service, was introduced as a spin-off of the general-interest streaming platform Justin.tv. Justin.tv covered various content categories but the gaming category grew rapidly and became the most popular content on the site. Inspired by the term “twitch gameplay” the company decided to create a dedicated platform for gaming content, which officially launched as TwitchTV Jacob Glavickas -
Platform upgrades
By 2014, Facebook had added even more interactive features like tagging friends, video, calling, groups, and its direct messaging app, Messenger. Between this time, Facebook also took possession of Instagram and started to advance that app. In 2014, on the 10th anniversary of the launch, Facebook gained the platforms WhatsApp, Oculus,and Atlas. Olivia Hunter -
A New Character Limit
An increased character limit from 140 to 280 was put in place in 2017. This allowed users to type out longer tweets. As Twitter founder Jack Dorsey tweeted, the 280 character limit came up as an elegant compromise to the original design idea behind Twitter and the need to expand as the service continues to grow. Quinten McKee -
Continued advancements
By 2019, the app had introduced Facebook Marketplace and reactions which made it possible to share different emotions to posts other than just a Like. Facebook faced a lot of criticism and scandals between this time. They had a lot of issues with the privacy of users and the spread of fake news that resulted in them creating more regulations to the app. Despite their efforts, 2019 unfortunately ended with another user privacy issue. Olivia Hunter -
Elons Involvement
In July 2023, Musk announced that Twitter would be rebranded to X and that the bird logo would be retired. In October 2023, the company estimated its value at about $19 billion, down about 55 percent from the purchase price one year earlier. Twitter has become less and less dependable. The platform’s basic product design is now tailored to the whims of Musk, a leader who seems to prioritize his own image and “free speech absolutist” ideology above business interests. Quinten McKee -
Metaverse
Now in 2024, Facebook has since rebranded itself as Meta and advanced their other platforms in efforts to develop the Metaverse. Though the platform has faced a lot of backlash over the years, it's likely to continue to grow and create new features. Olivia Hunter