-
Dave Woolley and Douglas Brown created Talkomatic, a multi-user chatroom application, in 1973 at the University of Illinois. It was a hit with the users of the PLATO System, which was the “first generalized computer-assisted instruction system.” Talkomatic allowed real-time chatting where each user had their own section of the screen where their messages showed up as they typed.
-
ARPANET was the first major packet-switching network and was an early user of the Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) suite. ARPANET actually became the Internet after the publication of the first Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) specification.
-
During the Great Blizzard of 1978, Ward Christensen and Randy Suess began developing the first public dial-up bulletin board system (BBS). A BBS is a server running software to connect users to a main system using a terminal program.
-
By the beginning of the year, more than 200 computers in dozens of institutions have been connected in CSNET. BITNET, another startup network, is based on protocols that include file transfer via e-mail rather than by the FTP procedure of the ARPA protocols.
-
FidoNet, a worldwide computer network, allows bulletin board systems (BBSes) to communicate with each other using a store-and-forward system to exchange messages between BBSes. Store-and-forward is a technique that stores information at an intermediate station before it is sent later on to another intermediate station or its final destination.
-
In January, Apple announces the Macintosh. Its user-friendly interface swells the ranks of new computer users.
-
The first IRCs began as an extension of BBSes but soon became the common program used to communicate via text. IRCs are still used today, including mIRC for Windows.
-
The number of hosts increases from 80,000 in January to 130,000 in July to over 160,000 in November! Australia, Germany, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand and the United Kingdom join the Internet.
-
Classmates was a social networking site allowing for people to find and reunite with old friends from school, along with the workplace and military. It’s notable for being the first website to introduce this concept, and one of the first social media websites, period.
-
AOL Instant Messenger was one of the first easy and instant forms of online communication. It served as a precursor to many similar services, and was an important figure in the “Chat Wars” of the late 90’s and early 2000’s. As with its main company, AOL, it has since fallen off almost completely.
-
Open Diary was the first main blogging platform and an early social media service. Despite being past its heyday, along with most sites from this period, it remains very important for several key innovations it made to social media. These include the introduction of reader comments and friends-only privacy.
-
As with AIM, Yahoo! Messenger was an early and major player among instant messengers. It utilized many features that are now textbook in social media, including a friends list, the ability to block other users, alerts, and notifications. It has since been shut down after going through multiple rebrandings and temporary shutdowns.
-
MSN Messenger, since rebranded to Windows Live Manager, is an instant messaging client. While it was launched with very basic features, that would soon change with many different versions being released. For a time, it was the premier instant messaging service, at the forefront of it all along with Yahoo! and AOL.
-
Wikipedia is the world’s first free online encyclopedia that does not use a central editing organization. This was revolutionary for the internet because anyone can post articles--and anyone can edit them, adding reference points as they wish. It is funded by the
WikiMedia Foundation (non-profit) which collects donations from users of the site. In terms of global internet engagement, it is the ninth most popular website according to Alexa Internet. -
Friendster launched in 2002. It is considered one of the original social networks. Users could create a profile, maintain contact with their friends, and network with their friends’ friends via messages. Friendster lost popularity in 2003. It maintained a reputation as a gaming network, but it suspended their services in 2015.
-
Myspace launched in 2003 as a social networking site modeled similarly to Friendster, but with two features that made it gain popularity: it was centered around music and entertainment, and you did not have to be a registered member to view a person’s profile. Myspace sold to NewsCorp in 2005--which was also its peak year in popularity. Since then it has slowly declined as a social networking site because of its failure to add features to improve users’ networking experience.
-
Facebook launched in 2004 at Harvard University as a social networking site for its students. Facebook founder bought the domain Facebook.com in 2005, allowing other college students to create profiles. It became a global site for anyone--not just students--in 2006. Today, Facebook is the most popular social networking site in the world
-
LinkedIn (launched in 2003 as a means for business professionals to network) struck profit in 2006. This is the same year that it offered shares to the public via its initial public offering. Because of its success, many social networking sites have followed suit.
-
Twitter (launched in 2006) gained popularity in 2007 with the invention of the hashtag. Adding a “#” symbol with a word or phrase attached linked content using the same hashtag. This made it so that users could easily access content of a particular interest. It also is useful in campaigns and political movements.
-
YouTube (launched in 2005) introduced its partners program in 2007. Because of the high number of views that the platform users were generating on their own videos, YouTube created a program for both the content creators and the company to profit off of advertisers. This was revolutionary for social network platforms, advertisers, content creators, and consumers.
-
Can you remember the pre-filter days of photo-sharing—back when there wasn’t the option to add the Gingham filter to make everything look “vintage”? We have Instagram’s founders to thank for our inability to go a day without posting a filtered pic with Polaroid corners to our highly curated feeds. On July 16, 2010, one of the first Instagram photos to be published by co-founder Mike Krieger (@mikeyk) was an uncaptioned, heavily filtered shot of a marina.
-
Pinterest released a feature of “Pinning” on their app. This took pinterest to a whole new level when it became popular in 2012 and people started to create their own pin boards virtually through the app.
-
Google plus became known for its “circles” for organizing friends together in a group without having to send a friend request. This then became integrated into GMail and Google Hangout. Sadly Google Plus came out at a bad time and failed to keep up with Facebook and Twitter.
-
Snapchat allowed users to post content that would disappear after 24 hours. Snapchat then became appealing to teens in which they ditched their family facebook friends.
-
In 2012 Facebook celebrated its large milestone of one billion users.
-
In 2013 the universe welcomed Vine, a popular video sharing/ social media app
-
2014 was known for selfie queens. Ellen DeGeneres’s Oscar photo had been retweeted over 3 million times in which it broke Twitter's retweet record, in which Ellen then one an award for “Golden Tweet” of the year.
-
In 2015 Meerkat was known to be the first app to start live streaming. Then, Twitter adopted a similar feature called Periscope, in which it won the first streaming war. Periscope easily became everyone's favorite to watch live events. The feature was so popular Apple rewarded it IOS app of the year in 2015.
-
In 2016 Instagram added the story feature to each profile. This let users post stories which they felt didn't need to be posted directly to their profile photo feed. After the stories became a huge success among users, instagram added the highlights option to each profile. The highlights option gave users the option to keep stories on their profile as a preview of what it would be like to follow them.
-
In 2016 Facebook launched live streaming for each user. This was a huge success as it was a great way to connect with friends or followers as it gave them ways to be instantly reached in real time.
-
After merging with Musical.ly, TikTok is released world wide. A chinese based company founded in 2012 by Zhang Yiming, Tiktok was used to share Chinese videos on a social media platform throughout China. After its wide success in China, they merged with Musical.ly to release worldwide and combine video sharing with music to create a wider audience.
-
In the summer of 2020, Instagram launched reel videos for each profile. This was a direct attempt to eliminate TikTok and get their users to focus on Instagram rather than Instagram and TikTok. With it certainly being one of the fairly new features, it has yet reach the attention of mainstream social media. As users continue to find TikTok more and more addicting daily, it is unlikely instagram can takeover the reel video platform.
