A Brief History of Social Media

ARPAnet delivers first message

Oct 29, 1969

The first "node-to-node" message from UCLA to Stanford was sent with the simple word "LOGIN". History of ARPAnet

Creation of Email

Oct 9, 1971

Ray Tomlinson invented email by using the "@" symbol to signify one computer sending a message to another. History of Email

Invention of the World Wide Web

Mar 12, 1989

Tim Berners-Lee was a British scientist who created the World Wide Web with hopes for universities to share information with each other around the world. Creation of WWW

SixDegrees.com

May 9, 1996

SixDegrees was the first social networking site created. Named after the concept of six degrees of separation, users were able to send messages and post items on their bulletin board to people within their degrees. SixDegrees Wiki

The first Blog

Dec 17, 1997

Jorn Barger coined the term "weblog". One of the first blogging websites was Usenet, which is a discussion system that was available on computers. History of Blogging

Napster

Jun 1, 1999

Napster is the first MP3 file sharing service with a user-friendly experience. Napster was a free music sharing service that anyone could use. Napster Wiki

A&M Records, Inc. v. Napster, Inc.

Mar 13, 2000

Metallica sues Napster after of a song of theirs was on Napster before the actual release date, this alerts them of all of their music being free on the service. Shortly after rapper Dr. Dre also files a lawsuit. Eventually A&M Records successfully shuts down Napster on the grounds of copyright infringement by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Napster Wiki

Friendster

Mar 9, 2002

Created by Canadian computer programmer Jonathan Abrams the site allowed users to contact other members and share online content. Friendster

Myspace

Aug 1, 2003

Several Friendster employees worked together to create a different social network. After 10 days Myspace was launched. Only 5 years after creation Myspace reached 100 million users.

Facebook

Feb 19, 2004

While attending Harvard University Mark Zuckerberg, age 23, founded "The Facebook" as it was originally named. Within a year it became a popular social network with most U.S. universities. Creation of Facebook

YouTube

Feb 14, 2005

YouTube was created by three former PayPal employees with the idea of sharing "home videos". In November of 2006 Google acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion. Creation of YouTube

Twitter

Mar 21, 2006

Twitter was created by members of a podcasting company called Odeo. Twitter increased it's popularity at the 2007 SXSW conference when usage went from 20,000 tweets per day to 60,000 tweets per day. Twitter Wiki