From the dawn of the 2000s to today, we discover how the spread of social networks has developed
Unless you have a nerdy resume similar to that of the stars of the sitcom “The Big Bang Theory”, I doubt you know with extreme certainty which was the first social network that ever existed. However, if you are dealing with this world, you may come across this topic. And you know what? Answering “MySpace” or, even worse, “Facebook” will cause very embarrassing silences .
In this article I will briefly review the most important stages from the birth of the first social platform to the development of a phenomenon that, today, involves billions of people all over the world.
The first social platforms: what they were and what they were for
What would you think if I told you that the first social network in history did not know it was a social network? Obviously I am referring to the fact that, at the time of its creation, the term did not yet exist. This is SixDegrees , a site born from the idea of an American lawyer named Andrew Weinreich. This portal was created to connect like-minded people based on social class, age group and the concept of six degrees of separation (although, in reality, it was only possible to use three and, therefore, access information about a friend of a friend of a friend). This project, born in 1997, was very pioneering and, probably, this is the reason why it ended with the closure of the site in 2001.
The term “social network” was born a few years later, exactly in 2003, one year after the creation of Friendster ; this American dating site was born from an idea of Jonathan Abrams, a Canadian engineer who wanted to make people interact online, guaranteeing them maximum security. The unexpected success of this site caused some technical disruptions due to the high number of subscribers. However, what decreed his end was the popularity criterion linked exclusively to the number of friends. Many users started creating fake accounts to increase their popularity and attract more and more contacts. The problem was solved too long and, in addition, the administrators decided to link the registration to the payment of a fee. This was how most people started moving to other platforms.
The most popular in the first half of the 2000s was undoubtedly MySpace , born from the idea of Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson. This social network marked a significant turning point because, in addition to allowing people to communicate, it allowed to share audio and video content and to personalize the profile. Many artists, not surprisingly, began to use MySpace as a means of self-promotion, but this social network found enormous success even among those who had no other purpose than to make new friends online.
The birth of Facebook: the Big Bang of social networks
It is useless to deny it: Facebook is not a social network, but “THE” social network . In fact, no platform has ever had the impact of the creature of the then very young Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg who, in 2003, starting from the idea of creating an interactive photo album of university students, developed a website together with some of his colleagues. capable of immediately winning a broad consensus. Not surprisingly, the transition from limited enrollment to Harvard students to those of other universities and, subsequently, high schools was very rapid, to the point of allowing the creation of an account to anyone who was at least thirteen years old.
The exponential growth of the popularity of this social channel gave birth to a real mass phenomenon that made Zuckerberg one of the most famous characters in the world, as well as enriching him immeasurably. In 2010, the birth of Facebook was even brought to the big screen by an international director such as David Fincher: “The Social Network” shows the development and realization of this idea that has changed the concept of social networks forever.
A brief history of the most used social networks
In the six years following the birth of Facebook, many other portals and applications were born that can be classified as social networks. To be honest, to talk in detail about their history you could write thousands of pages but, since this is a blog article, I’ll just tell you how and when the most popular ones of the moment were born.
Although it was not born as a real social network, YouTube has been very successful since its creation in 2005. The most famous video sharing platform in the world , born from the idea of Jawed Karim, Chad Hurley and Steve Chan has arrived to transmit more than one hundred million content a day in the space of a year, so much so that it attracted the attention of Google, which in 2006 bought it for over a billion and a half dollars.
Created in 2010 by Mike Kryger and Kevin Systrom, Instagram was born as an app for sharing images and immediately achieved excellent results. Just two years after its birth, the company was taken over by Facebook which, thanks to some evolutions (one above all: the Instagram Stories), made it one of the most popular platforms among young people .
Although in Italy it has not yet reached numbers comparable to Facebook, YouTube and Instagram, Twitter is to be considered as one of the most important and influential social networks on the international scene. Born in 2006 from the idea of the founder Jack Dorsey to allow people to text several people at the same time, the social network of the little bird is now mainly used for real-time communication and is widely used by companies.
In conclusion
It is not excluded that, in the future, I will talk in more detail about each of these social networks. In the meantime, after reading this article, you will certainly have understood the potential of social media for business. If you want to win the largest number of buyer persona on the hottest platforms of the moment, it is important that you develop a good social media marketing strategy based on an editorial calendar.
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