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First Digital Computer
In 1938, the US Navy created an electromechanical computer, which was to be used on a submarine and break German ciphers during WWII. This technology would continue to the creation of smaller and smaller computers that would eventually be available to the public for personal use. -
E-mail Created
Ray Tomlinson invented the concept of e-mail, which was simply sending messages from one computer to another over a network. Eventually, this network would almost always be the internet and is what led to the rise of instant messaging. -
ARPANET adopted TCP/IP
This was the beginning of research for what eventually would be the internet (a network of networks), and it set the groundwork for work on what we now know as the world wide web. -
ICQ is Created
ICQ, created by the company Mirabilis, was the first major instant messenger, which eventually led to other programs such as AIM and Yahoo Messenger improving the system. Instant messaging has become an important feature of social media today. -
Something Awful Forum Site Created
Still a top forum site, Something Awful (or SA) has had a history of incidents, such as being blocked by the Spam Prevention Early Warning System in 2003, or having to refund over $27,000 in donations meant to help Hurricane Katrina because Paypal would not allow them to donate to the Red Cross. Despite this, SA has retained its popularity. It is mostly known for creating many "memes" and was extremely influential to the creation of future forum sites like 4chan that have the same reputation. -
MySpace Created
MySpace was the first major social network site, which was the inspiration for many other popular social media sites today, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. -
Skype Created
Skype was the first major social media program to focus on video and voice chat, while still providing text-based options, as well as calls to landlines and mobile phones for premium users. Eventually being bought by Microsoft for $8.5 billion in 2011, it is still popular today. However, it must also compete with many other social media applications that it helped influence. -
Facebook Created
Facebook originally started as a resource for Harvard students, but it's success eventually spread its influence to other universities and eventually the public in 2005. Mark Zuckerberg had already made a couple other small social media sites in the past for his peers at Harvard, but Facebook has clearly been the most influential and popular, becoming one of the largest social media sites today. It sets the standard for a lot of aspects upon which other websites focus. -
Twitter Created
Another incredibly influential social media site has been Twitter. Originally called "twttr" and meant to be similar to texting in a social media setting, this site has attracted over 900 million accounts since its first tweet was sent. -
Instagram Created
Instagram is different than most other social media websites because it focuses on images as opposed to text. While other websites have implemented sharing options to images, Instagram has become one of the most popular websites to post them. -
Vine
Vine was a short form video service where users could share six-second-long video clips. Vine was founded by Dom Hofmann, Rus Yusupov, and Colin Kroll on June 2012. The company was bought by Twitter on October 2012 and Vine made its first debut on January 24, 2013 for iPhone and later released for android in 2013 as a free app. In 2015 Vine had 200 million plus users and on October 27, 2016 Twitter had to announce that users could no longer upload videos but still be able to view and download. -
Snap Chat
A mobile application and that involves image messaging that allows users to view pictures and messages for a short period of time before its in accessible. A key feature is video chat that allows you to do many things like My Story, Live Stories, Discover, Our Stories, Official Stories, Memories, Geo Stickers, and World Stickers. Snapchat has 166 million daily active users Created by former students at Stanford University who names are Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy, and Reggie Brown.
