The Evolution of Social Media: Now And Then
“Social media is the ultimate equalizer. It gives a voice and a platform to anyone willing to engage.” — Amy Jo Martin, Founder and CEO of Digital Royalty.
Social media is more of sociology and psychology more than technology. But it always and constantly changes with time and the key is to listen, engage and build connections.
by IEEE-TEMS
THE ADVANCEMENT OF MOST USED TECHNOLOGY
They say that necessity is the mother of invention and the man’s need for connecting with people and developing relationships has made him come up with technologies that will help him do so. Social media now has grown a lot from being a place just to talk to people it has now become a place to discuss new ideas, deliver news, advertise a product, and all in all an amazing technology that everyone now relies heavily on especially during the Covid 19.
We rely on social for everything but all the trending apps and websites we use today didn’t even exist two decades back.
HISTORY OF SOCIAL MEDIA
To the first talk about social media, we should first start with the birth of the Internet. The ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) was introduced for the researchers to share their findings which would reduce the costs and the effort involved in duplicating the documents. There were a few more Networks like MILNET, CSNET, NSFNET, ANSNET but one of the notable moments is the introduction of the TCP/IP protocols in 1973 by Vent Cerf and Bob Kahn. The launch of actual social sites passed off solely when 1997. Web-blogs were the area unit of the first variety of social communication. Then there came emails and boosted electronic communication. several different sites like LinkedIn (2002), Facebook (2004), modified the complete method of communication.
The choices were limited but our imagination is boundless which gave birth to the evolution of social media technology.
MODERN SOCIAL MEDIA
Today Social Media has gained more than five billion users. It’s become an area for amusement, supply of knowledge even shopping and has become an essential part of our lives. There are a few social media sites that are popular and each of them has something unique that made them stand out and gain the attention of users.
Some of the very popular social media created a revolution with their ideas.
(I personally call them FITS, like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat. Because they are born to fit in the world.)
It was launched in 2004 by Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg along with Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chirs Hughes. It has nearly 2.8 billion users. It now owns both Instagram and WhatsApp. There have been a lot of problems involving fake news, hate speech, copyright issues and user privacy nevertheless it has the highest number of users compared to any other social media.
Founded in 2010 by Stanford’s graduate Kevin Systrom as a photo-sharing website and purchased by Facebook in 2012, Instagram has over one billion users worldwide.
Founded in 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, Biz Stone, et al. as a microblogging website, by 2020, 22% of U.S. adults were Twitter users, in line with bench analysis.
Snapchat
One of the latest social media platforms that have blown up in recent years. It was founded in 2011 by a trio of Stanford’s students Evan Spiegeleisen, Reggie Brown, and Bobby Murphy. What makes Snapchat different from other social media is that the pictures and messages sent through Snapchat are only available for a short time. This video-sharing service introduced the idea of “stories,” or serialized short videos which are displayed for 24 hours, and “filters,” which run informative digital effects using augmented reality. Recently Snapchat has launched what it calls “Spotlight” which resembles TikTok in certain ways but what makes this different is that you cannot comment and other users won’t know your user profile unless you are above 18 and have a public profile.
SOCIAL MEDIA AS BUSINESS-PLATFORM
Technology has shifted from massive Desktops to pocket-size Mobile Phones and high-speed wireless web, social media has its own necessity. Marketers have chosen to use social media as their weapon for increasing their services the trade has reached its peaks. Sitting reception, we will get what we have a tendency to want.
Future of Social Media
Social Media has to reach out to every person around the world. It has its own problems like getting access to personal details, frauds, phishing, Bullying, etc.
Apart from these future goals are
- Personalize content at zero levels.
- Reducing the amount of conflict occurring in Newsfeed.
- Reducing content that shouldn’t be on the internet by using artificial intelligence.
- Focus on Community building.
There are a lot more amazing to discuss and imagine with persistent curiosity cause,
“Curiosity is one of the most permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.”- Samuel johnson
Meanwhile, check out our work, and let’s join our hands to make the world a better place.
Stay tuned to our blogs for more exhilarated content to explore, so as to slowly grow like a plant and let’s bloom like a beautiful flower together!
