This is 2021 and we are part of the internet generation. The media in the past were news papers, radio or later television. But in the 21st century there is another type of media that is associated with the internet, called social media. Which has more independence and more easy to access. Anyone who has access to the internet and the right device can access and share anything until it was taken down by the authorities.
According to Wikipedia a social media are interactive technologies that allow the creation or sharing/exchange of information, ideas, career interests, and other forms of expression via virtual communities and networks.
If you are not familiar with the topic I am here to tell you about the online platforms such as Facebook YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and many more. According to the researchers there are over 4 billion social media users in the world. And the global population is just under 8 billion. Which means about half of the human population on planet earth has access to such platforms and it keeps growing everyday. But have you ever thought when was the beginning of this technology? Who created it? How many of online platforms are there? If you haven’t it is time for you to think about them and I am here with the answers to all those questions.
In the 1960s University of Illinois had created a computer system called PLATO (Programmed Logic for Automatic Teaching Operations). It was a computer assisted instruction system which initially ran on a computer within the university but later in 1970s it was developed to support several types of computers worldwide. PLATO was not a social media platform but it showed the basic social media features, such as Talkomatic (a chat room), Personal Notes(e-mails), Term-Talk(instant Messaging).
Following picture shows PLATO running a fractional distillation simulation
In the 1973 a bulletin board system called Community Memory was introduced. A Bulletin Board System or BBS is a computer software that runs in a server which allows people to log in. And once logged in that person can upload or download the information in the system.
In 1990s the WWW or World Wide Web (simply “The Web” as most of us know it) was introduced. After that these forums and BBS converted into internet forums, which allowed more and more users to log in at the same time. Also the option was much cheaper than before.
In 1994 GeoCities was launched. It is considered as the first social network service company which was later acquired by Yahoo! In 1997 SixDegrees.com was launched. It is the first online business that was created for the public. It was operated until 2001. Many consider SixDegrees.com as the first social networking site because it had the ability to create a friend list and profiles.
Read more about SixDegrees.com
In 1998 Open Diary was launched. It was an online diary community that allowed users to write their own diary or to read others entries and comment. Which can be identified as the precursor to blogging. You could keep your diary as private or public. The site hosted more than 5 million diaries. In 2014 the site went off line but relaunched in 2018 as a subscription web site.
After that there are many social media sites that launched and are still in operation while some went bankrupt or went completely offline
Here is the list of social media platforms that still in operation
Here is the list of social media platforms that currently not in use
I believe that this article has helped you in some way to add some useful information to your knowledge. And we will be able to see the new social media platforms that will be launched in future. Because this is the future of communication. And it is going to be more and more developed, even right now some genius may be creating an algorithm that might be the next most popular social media platform. Who Knows?
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