Social
media has changed from being a direct electronic information exchange to a
virtual community in less than a generation, a shopping platform, and an
essential 21st-century marketing tool.
How
did it start? How have social media impacted billions of people's lives? What
adjustments have companies made to the digital consumer lifestyle? What social
media platforms do marketing professionals use? All of this is a result of
social media's ongoing development.
Before
the Internet:
In
a way, social media started on May 24, 1844, when a telegraph operator manually
wrote a string of electronic dots and dashes.
Samuel
Morse grasped the historical ramifications of his scientific discovery, as
evidenced by the first electronic message he sent from Baltimore to Washington,
D.C.: "What has God done? He wrote.
The
history and significance of Morse code are covered in the recent Washington
Post piece "Morse code was used before Twitter and Facebook:
"Remembering the Real Inventor of Social Media," which also includes
early iterations of today's "OMG" and "LOL."
Despite
the long history of digital communication, most modern tales of the Internet's
and social media's development date back to 1969, when the Advanced Research
Projects Agency Network, or ARPANET, was founded.
This
early digital network, developed by the U.S. Department of Defense, allowed
scientists at four affiliated universities to exchange software, hardware, and
other data.
The
National Science Foundation launched NSFNET, a more capable nationwide digital
network, in 1987, marking the first days of the modern Internet. The first
social networking platform was introduced in 1997, ten years later.
Launch of
social networks:
The
"History of Social Networking" article may be found on the technology
news website Digital Trends. The development of the Internet allowed for the
launch of online communication services throughout the 1980s and 1990s,
including CompuServe, America Online, and Prodigy. They introduced consumers to
digital communication through online chat, email, and bulletin board messaging.
First
social networks emerged, with the brief-lived Six Degrees profile upload
service in 1997.
Friendster
followed this service in 2001. Millions of people have registered for email
addresses on these simple platforms, making it possible to do some basic online
networking.
With
the advent of the publishing website LiveJournal in 1999, weblogs—also known as
blogs—began to gain popularity as another early form of digital social communication.
This was when Pyra Labs, a technological startup that Google later bought in
2003, introduced the Blogger publishing platform.
As
a networking platform for professionals with a focus on their careers, LinkedIn
was created in 2002. It had increased to more than 675 million users globally
by 2020. It is still a well-liked social media platform for people looking for
work and H.R. professionals looking for competent applicants.
Two
previous significant attempts into social media failed after experiencing a
spike in success. Myspace debuted in 2003. Because users could share new music
on their profile pages, it became the most popular website in 2006.
In
2008, it was overshadowed by Facebook. In 2011, musician Justin Timberlake
bought Myspace for $35 million, but it has since become an afterthought in
social media.
Google's
attempt to make its way into the social media landscape, Google+, began in
2012. The rocky existence ended in 2018 after the private information of nearly
500,000 Google+ users was compromised in a data breach.
Modern
social networks
More
than 5 billion mobile users globally use various services that makeup today's
social media environment.
The top
social networking sites for 2020 are shown below:
Facebook
According
to Pew Research, launched by Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg in 2004, it has
nearly 1.7 billion users — including 69% of U.S. adults.
Reddit
300
million users have turned Reddit into a news aggregator and social commentary
website since it was first introduced in 2005 as a news-sharing platform by
Massachusetts twenty-somethings Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian. The ability
to "upvote" and "downvote" user posts is the basis for its
appeal.
Twitter
Pew
Research was founded in 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, Biz Stone, and
others as a microblogging site; by 2020, 22% of U.S. adults were Twitter users.
Instagram
Instagram,
a photo-sharing website started in 2010 by Stanford alumnus Kevin Systrom, was
bought by Facebook in 2012. Instagram users are more than 1 billion globally.
Pinterest
Ben
Silbermann created Pinterest in 2010 as a visual "pinboard," It now
has more than 335 million monthly active users. In 2019, Pinterest became a
publicly traded corporation.
Snapchat
The
video-sharing website, established in 2011 by three Stanford students named
Evan Spiegel, Reggie Brown, and Bobby Murphy, invented the concepts of
"stories," or serialized short movies, and "filters," which
frequently include digital educational effects. Based on the place.
"Tick Tock"
The
short-form video sharing platform, established in 2016 by the Chinese internet
company ByteDance, combined with the American smartphone app Musical.ly in
2018, has since gained popularity among American teenagers and young adults. As
of 2020, it had more than 800 million users worldwide.
The
future of social media
What
happens next in social media will almost certainly be shaped by the evolving
business model and storytelling technology advances. How will mega-platforms
like How much money do Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, and others make? How will
consumers adjust? How will companies use social media to reach a wider audience
and propagate their messages? The answers to these issues will determine the
future stage of social media evolution.
Premium
Social Media Services
What
is the future of social networks? Consumers will favor services that enable
them to: Personalize content at a detailed level; Reduce the amount of abuse
and conflict that frequently occurs on public social media; According to a
recent article in Entrepreneur titled "11 Ways Social Media Will Evolve in
the Future," consumers will gravitate toward these services.
•
Greater focus on privacy protection
•
Take advantage of more mobile devices
•
Focus more on community building
According
to Entrepreneur, this could mean a move towards paid subscription services on
social media. Meeting the evolving needs of social media users while preserving
an authentic brand voice will be a challenge for marketing professionals.