In What is Social Networking, I explained what Social Networking is. Find out here more about social networking and history of social networking below.
Social Networking refers to the interaction of people online through various dynamic sites. Though it appears that Social Networking has emerged just a decade ago but it is not so. It has been around since the birth of internet. But it has boomed in the last few years and before that the development pace was quite slow.
Start of the Internet
Most people don’t know that the first email was delivered in 1971. It could be considered the dawn of internet and social networking. In 1978, a primitive form of today’s Facebook and Dropbox emerged; Bulletin Board System was an interactive medium through which people could share information, upload and download software and data.
In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee came up with some ideas to manage and share information online. It became the bases of World Wide Web.
History of Social Networking
In 1992, Tripod.com emerged as a venture of two classmates Bo Peabody and Brett Hershey; it was initially thought to be an online community for youngsters. Tripod.com was one of the first social media sites to aim at managing user generated content. The years of late 90s is said to be the dot-com bubble as many new internet companies and website were emerging and the world started to realize the power of internet.
By 1997, internet had 1 million sites. The messenger by AOL allowed users to exchange instant messages. In 1998, Google launched an efficient search engine; this became the milestone of the world of internet as finding specific information now became just the matter of a click!
Although, the turn of millennium saw the decline of internet services but it was short lived and as the new millennium progressed, Social Media saw an unfathomable boom. In 2001, Wikipedia was launched; it is the biggest sink of information online. 2002 saw the launch of Friendster, it had 3 million users within 3 months. In 2003, MySpace and LinkedIn were launched. In 2004, Facebook and Flickr were founded. Today, the Social Media is a multi-billion dollar industry!
You will also like to read: How Social Media Can Be Used Against You
Tags: Social Networking history
