Social Media Timeline StumbleUpon is acquired by eBay. May 24 Facebook starts allowing developers to use the site as a platform for games and widgets, leading to the success of popular games such as Farmville, Bejeweled Blitz, and Mafia Wars. July 29 Apple releases the iPhone in the United States. iPhone users can access social media sites and apps through their phone. 2008 April Facebook becomes the most popular social networking site, surpassing Myspace which had been in first place since June 2006. July Facebook Connect is revealed. Facebook Connect enables users to log onto third-party websites, applications, gaming systems, and mobile devices. July 4 TweetDeck begins. TweetDeck is a desktop application for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Myspace, and other social networking sites. October 7 2011 January 28 Egypt shuts off all internet access in an effort to contain activists from organizing protests which threaten to end the reign of President Hosni Mubarak. The block is temporary and does not put an end to the protests. February Social networking websites such as Twitter and Facebook help activists organize an uprising in Egypt .

The trend of using social networking websites to organize protests and demonstrations continues throughout 2011 in the Middle East and North Africa. Various governments attempt to shut down social media and internet access to crackdown on protest movements throughout 2011 to varying degrees of success. February 22 An Egyptian baby is named Facebook to honor the role that social media played in Egypt's revolution. April WikiLeaks begins publishing files on Guantanamo Bay detainees. August 11 The British Parliament considers turning off social networking sites. Protesters use social networking sites to organize violent riots throughout the country. After exploring whether it is right or even possible to cut off social networking sites in England , the government decides not to do so. August 19 StumbleUpon surpasses Facebook as the site that delivers more than half of all U.S. social media traffic. August 22 A teacher in Missouri sues the state over what has become known as the Facebook law. The new state law prevents teachers from contacting students through non-work related websites. The teacher's lawsuit argues that the new law makes it illegal for her to chat with her own child over Facebook. 2013 April 15 Social media becomes a major source of information about the Boston Marathon bombing .

It is the first major terrorist attack in the U.S. during the age of Facebook, Twitter and smartphones. Many Americans receive news of the bombing and search for clues about the suspects on social media. Several anonymous posters name people online who they believe are involved in the bombing. Once the suspects are identified, investigators look at the suspects' Facebook accounts for evidence and clues for motives behind the bombing. April 24 A retired police detective's Facebook post provides authorities with a lead to the driver involved in a 1968 hit-and-run death. Douglas Parkhurst has been identified via Facebook as the driver of the car that did not stop after hitting a four-year-old girl in upstate New York on Halloween night in 1968. Police have been following hundreds of leads, but the break comes when retired police detective Russ Johnson posts information about the case. A former resident of the area in New York where the crime happened sees Johnson's post and comes forward with the information that leads the police to Parkhurst. 2014 January 16 For the first time ever, a trial based on alleged defamation via twitter begins.

Attorney Rhonda Holmes is suing her former client, rock musician and actress Courtney Love over a tweet in which Love claimed that Holmes had been “bought off” in a case related to the estate of Kurt Cobain , Nirvana singer and Love’s deceased husband. The case is being referred to as the Twibel trial and could have major legal implications for any Twitter user. The Los Angeles Superior Court has already rejected an argument by Love’s lawyers that language on Twitter should be interpreted differently than if the same words are used in a more formal setting. This is the first trial of its kind, but the second time Love has been sued over her tweets. Three years ago, a fashion designer filed a lawsuit against Love over a series of insulting tweets. However, that case never went to trial because Love settled out of court for $430,000. The following week, the jury votes in favor of Courtney Love. After only three hours of deliberation, the jury rules that Love's 2010 tweet suggesting that her attorney had been "bought off" was not defamatory.

April 14 Islamist militant group Boko Haram is accused of kidnapping about 280 girls from a school in northeast Nigeria with the intention of making the girls sex slaves. The mass kidnapping—and the government's inept attempts to rescue them—sparks international outrage and anti-government protests in Nigeria. A social media campaign helps increase news coverage of the kidnappings and puts pressure on President Goodluck Jonathan to take action against Boko Haram. Related Links The History of Social Media | Digital Trends Denphumi/Shutterstock Long before it became the commercialized mass information and entertainment juggernaut it is today, long before it was accessible to the general public, and certainly many years before Al Gore claimed he “took the initiative in creating” it, the Internet – and its predecessors – were a focal point for social interactivity. Granted, computer networking was initially envisioned in the heyday of The Beatles as a military-centric command and control scheme. But as it expanded beyond just a privileged few hubs and nodes, so too did the idea that connected computers might also make a great forum for discussing mutual topics of interest, and perhaps even meeting or renewing acquaintances with other humans. In the 1970s, that process began in earnest.

Related: Mullets reigned supreme in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s; computers were a far rarer commodity. Machine languages were bewildering, and their potential seemingly limited. What’s more, this whole sitting-in-front-of-a-keyboard thing was so… isolationistic. Put all this together and you have a medium where only the most ardent enthusiasts and techno-babbling hobbyists dared tread. It was, in effect, a breeding ground for pocket-protector-wearing societal rejects, or nerds. Boring, reclusive nerds at that. Yet it also was during this time, and with a parade of purportedly antisocial geeks at the helm, that the very gregarious notion of social networking would take its first steps towards becoming the omnipresent cultural phenomenon we know and love in 2014. BBS, AOL and CompuServe: The Infant Years “Put all this together and you have a medium where only the most ardent enthusiasts and techno-babbling hobbyists dared tread.” It started with the BBS.

Short for Bulletin Board System, these online meeting places were effectively independently-produced hunks of code that allowed users to communicate with a central system where they could download files or games (many times including pirated software) and post messages to other users. Accessed over telephone lines via a modem, BBSes were often run by hobbyists who carefully nurtured the social aspects and interest-specific nature of their projects – which, more often than not in those early days of computers, was technology-related. Moreover, long distance calling rates usually applied for out-of-towners, so many Bulletin Boards were locals-only affairs that in turn spurred local in-person gatherings. And voila, just like that, suddenly the antisocial had become social. The BBS was no joke. Though the technology of the time restricted the flexibility of these systems, and the end-user’s experience, to text-only exchanges of data that crawled along at glacial speed, BBSes continued to gain popularity throughout the ‘80s and well into the ‘90s, when the Internet truly kicked into gear. Indeed, some services – such as Tom Jennings’ FidoNet – linked numerous BBSes together into worldwide computer networks that managed to survive the Internet revolution.

But there were also other avenues for social interaction long before the Internet exploded onto the mainstream consciousness. One such option was CompuServe, a service that began life in the 1970s as a business-oriented mainframe computer communication solution, but expanded into the public domain in the late 1980s. CompuServe allowed members to share files and access news and events. But it also offered something few had ever experienced – true interaction. Not only could you send a message to your friend via a newfangled technology dubbed “e-mail” (granted, the concept of e-mail wasn’t exactly newfangled at the time, though widespread public access to it was). You could also join any of CompuServe’s thousands of discussion forums to yap with thousands of other members on virtually any important subject of the day. Those forums proved tremendously popular and paved the way for the modern iterations we know today. But if there is a true precursor to today’s social networking sites, it was likely spawned under the AOL (America Online) umbrella.

In many ways, and for many people, AOL was the Internet before the Internet, and its member-created communities (complete with searchable “Member Profiles,” in which users would list pertinent details about themselves), were arguably the service’s most fascinating, forward-thinking feature. Yet there was no stopping the real Internet, and by the mid-1990s it was moving full bore. Yahoo had just set up shop, Amazon had just begun selling books, and the race to get a PC in every household was on. And, by 1995, the site that may have been the first to fulfill the modern definition of social networking was born. The Internet Boom: Social Networking’s Adolescence Though differing from many current social networking sites in that it asks not “Who can I connect with?” but rather, “Who can I connect with that was once a schoolmate of mine?” Classmates.com proved almost immediately that the idea of a virtual reunion was a good one. Early users could not create profiles, but they could locate long-lost grade school chums, menacing school bullies and maybe even that prom date they just couldn’t forget. It was a hit almost immediately, and even today the service boasts some 57 million registered accounts.

One of the first iterations of SixDegrees.com. That same level of success can’t be said for SixDegrees.com. Sporting a name based on the theory somehow associated with actor Kevin Bacon that no person is separated by more than six degrees from another, the site sprung up in 1997 and was one of the very first to allow its users to create profiles, invite friends, organize groups, and surf other user profiles. Its founders worked the six degrees angle hard by encouraging members to bring more people into the fold. Unfortunately, this “encouragement” ultimately became a bit too pushy for many, and the site slowly devolved into a loose association of computer users and numerous complaints of spam-filled membership drives. SixDegrees.com folded completely just after the turn of the millennium. Other sites of the era opted solely for niche, demographic-driven markets. One was AsianAvenue.com, founded in 1997. A product of Community Connect Inc., which itself was founded just one year prior in the New York apartment of former investment banker and the future Community Connect CEO, AsianAvenue.com was followed by BlackPlanet.com in 1999 and by the Hispanic-oriented MiGente.com in 2000.

All three still exist today, with BlackPlanet.com in particular still enjoying tremendous success with more than eight million visitors per month. Friendster, LinkedIn, MySpace and Facebook: The Biz Grows Up In 2002, social networking hit really its stride with the launch of Friendster . Friendster used a degree of separation concept similar to that of the now-defunct SixDegrees.com, refined it into a routine dubbed the “Circle of Friends,” and promoted the idea that a rich online community can exist only between people who truly have common bonds. And it ensured there were plenty of ways to discover those bonds. An interface that shared many of the same traits one would find at an online dating site certainly didn’t seem to hurt. Friendster CEO Jonathan Abrams even once referred to his creation as a dating site that isn’t about dating. Within a year after its launch, Friendster boasted more than three million registered users and a ton of investment interest. Unfortunately, the service has since seen more than its fair share of technical difficulties, questionable management decisions, and a resulting drop in its North American fortunes. Although briefly enjoying success in Indonesia and in the Philippines, Friendster has since abandoned social networking and now exists solely as an online gaming site.

Introduced just a year later in 2003, LinkedIn took a decidedly more serious, sober approach to the social networking phenomenon. Rather than being a mere playground for former classmates, teenagers, and cyberspace Don Juans, LinkedIn was, and still is, a networking resource for business people who want to connect with other professionals. In fact, LinkedIn contacts are referred to as “connections.” Today, LinkedIn boasts more than 297 million members. MySpace also launched in 2003. Though it no longer resides upon the social networking throne in many English-speaking countries – that honor now belongs to Facebook just about everywhere – MySpace was once the perennial favorite. It did so by tempting the key young adult demographic with music, music videos, and a funky, feature-filled environment. It looked and felt hipper than major competitor Friendster right from the start, and it conducted a campaign of sorts in the early days to show alienated Friendster users just what they were missing. Over the years however, the number of casual Myspace users declined, and today the site exists now as a social networking site targeted to bands and musicians. As expected, the ubiquitous Facebook now leads the global social networking pack.

Founded, like many social networking sites, by university students who initially peddled their product to other university students, Facebook launched in 2004 as a Harvard-only exercise and remained a campus-oriented site for two full years before finally opening to the general public in 2006. Yet, even by that time, Facebook was considered big business. So much so that, by 2009, Silicon Valley bigwigs such as Paypal co-founder and billionaire Peter Thiel invested tens of millions of dollars just to see it flourish. The secret of Facebook’s success — the site currently boasts more than 1.3 billion active users — is a subject of much debate. Some point to its ease of use, others to its multitude of easily-accessed features, and still others, to its memorable name. A highly targeted advertising model certainly doesn’t hurt, either, nor did financial injections such as the $60 million from noted Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-shing in 2007. Regardless, there’s universal agreement on one thing: Facebook promotes both honesty and openness. It seems people really enjoy being themselves, and throwing that openness out there for all to see.

Pulling Ahead: How Facebook and Twitter won the Web Facebook is king for a reason. It wasn’t just through luck that founder Mark Zuckerberg’s darling came to reign supreme over the social media kingdom. It was, in fact, a series of smart moves and innovative features that set the platform apart from the rest of the social media pack. First and foremost, the 2007 launch of the Facebook Platform was key to site’s success. The open API made it possible for third-party developers to create applications that work within Facebook itself. Almost immediately after being released, the platform gained a massive amount of attention. At one point in time, Facebook had hundreds of thousands of apps built on the platform, so many that Facebook launched the Facebook App Store to organize and display them all. Twitter, meanwhile, created its own API and enjoyed similar success as a result. DT’s early hands-on with Google+. The other key to success was Facebook’s ubiquitous ‘Like’ button, which broke free from the bounds of the site and began appearing all over the Internet. Now you can ‘like’ or “tweet’ just about everything even when you’re not on Facebook or Twitter.

Realizing the power of social networking, Google decided to launch their own social network (Google+) in 2007. It differed from Facebook and Twitter in that it wasn’t necessarily a full-featured networking site, but rather a social “layer” of the overall Google experience. Initially, Google generated a lot of buzz with the service’s Hangouts feature, which allowed users to enter live video chats with other online friends. At the time of launch, Facebook was scrambling to keep up by integrating a video chat feature of their own. Within just four weeks, Google+ had garnered 25 million unique visitors, with as much as 540 million active monthly users as of June 2014. Regardless, the service definitely didn’t dethrone Zuckerberg’s behemoth, especially considering more than half of Google+ users have never even visited the service’s official site. It still arguably showed the world that there was still room for innovation and competition in the realm of social networking, though. The Multi-platformed Self: The Rise of Mobile Over the course of the past two years, “Fourth screen” technology — smartphones, tablets, etc. — has changed social networking and the way we communicate with one another entirely.

What used to sit on our desks now conveniently fits in the palm of our hands, allowing us to effortlessly utilize functionality once reserved for multiple devices wherever we go. Given the abrupt rise in mobile computing, it’s not surprising the most popular social media platforms of the past several years hinge on the capabilities of smartphones. Photo and video-sharing applications such as Snapchat and Instagram, the latter of which has now garnered a staggering 20 billion images since the app’s initial inception in October 2010, exist almost entirely on mobile. The same goes with platforms such as Foursquare, an application in which users use their smartphones to check in to various locations around the globe, and various matchmaking services. Tinder, for instance, currently boasts more than 10 million daily users, each of which swipes for potential partners based on their approximately in relation to their smartphone. Mobile-based platforms also approach social networking in an entirely different fashion than their Web-based counterparts.

Rather than offering a comprehensive social networking experience like the now-defunct Myspace and the struggling Google+, they instead specialize in a specific kind of interaction service that involves the sharing of public images (Instagram), the private sharing of images sharing (Snapchat), augmented reality (Foursquare), and location-based matchmaking (Tinder). People essentially use the various services in conjunction with other platforms to build a comprehensive, digital identity. “People now exist on multiple platforms, and instead of fighting against this trend, larger companies are tapping into this new environment.” Indeed social media companies no longer see the market as strictly zero-sum, or at least that’s what Zuckerberg continues to say in public. The registration process for hundreds of applications such Snapchat, Instagram, Foursquare, and Tinder can be completed using already-existing Facebook, Gmail, or Twitter accounts. Furthermore, a number of platforms allow users to simultaneously post content using several platforms at once. Again, people now exist on multiple platforms, and instead of fighting against this trend, larger companies are tapping into this new environment. Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality: The Future of Social Networking In March 2014, Facebook acquired Oculus VR , a company on the cusp of mass producing virtual-reality headsets.

Upon sealing the deal , Zuckerberg commented regarding the communication potential for the platform, highlighting the slew of potential uses for the virtual technology when it comes to academics, viewing live events, and consulting with doctors face-to-face. However, Facebook has taken a hands-off approach in its management of Oculus VR, allowing the company to continue focusing predominately on gaming applications while other parties — i.e. the Pentagon — quietly look into using virtual reality headsets for military purposes . A number of medical experts have even begun using virtual reality to treat anxiety, combat-induced P.T.S.D., and other pronounced mental illnesses. Adult entertainment, meanwhile, has invested in virtual reality for years. Oculus Rift To simplify my point, it appears a good deal of people have high hopes that virtual reality will become the next blockbuster computing platform. The technology already exists, and with the consumer version of the Oculus Rift VR headset slated to go on sale in late 2014 for under $300, the potential for widespread adoption of virtual reality has never been greater. At the very least, the Rift’s success or failure in the market will shape Facebook’s approach toward incorporating virtual reality.

Note that augmented reality differs from virtual reality in that it applies digital interaction to the real world instead of creating an audio-visual experience from scratch. In terms of social networking, augmented reality offers a number of possibilities. For instance, people could share their name, interests, relationship status, and mutual friends all within a digital sphere. Google Glass Believe it or not, augmented reality already exists in apps like Yelp and Google Ingress. Smartphones are more than capable of delivering augmented reality, and as one might expect, the technology is the entire concept driving Google Glass’ digital integration with the real world. Google’s deliberate decision to sell Glass at an inflated price of $1,500, however, is likely meant to exclude the general public while the tech giant and a selective group of consumers — aka “explorers” work to hammer out the device’s flaws. The day Google lowers the price of Glass to its estimated production cost of $150 marks the day when widespread adoption of augmented reality, including augmented reality in social networking, becomes a greater possibility. Until then, there’s always Snapchat and the overuse of hashtags in just about everything we do.

The bid for originality: Facebook and Twitter bet big on video and livestreaming Fueled by the rise of third-party apps, social media giants were forced to take note of the video format by 2012. But not before that same format, in a different guise, had laid waste to any form of originality on their respective services. A spending spree followed. Within the span of just a couple of years, several major buyouts —and failed acquisition attempts — took place within the sector. In 2012, Twitter purchased video-looping platform, Vine. Later that same year, Facebook bought Instagram, which would eventually introduce video-sharing into its own app app to great success. Then in 2013, Facebook made its infamous bid for Snapchat , which was turned down by the makers of the ephemeral messaging app. Vine Meanwhile, the video-shaped void on Facebook and Twitter had been filled by new media companies that were experts in the art of viral content (i.e. BuzzFeed, 9GAG, Mashable). An earlier source had been YouTube, which had heralded the dawn of the internet celebrity with its homegrown roster of creators.

Despite their popularity, however, viral videos posed more complications for social media giants than they did opportunities. Left to operate independently, both Instagram and Vine proved to be solid investments. Their respective owners, however, were still facing the same issue. By 2015, Twitter was being labelled as “inaccessible” due to its flat growth in user numbers. Facebook, on the other hand, saw its users sharing less personal information. Instead of original posts, Facebook news feeds and Twitter timelines became bloated with viral videos, memes, GIFs, and clickbait articles — making them harder to navigate in the process. As in the past, the perceived solution came from an existing product, which ended up paying the ultimate price for its abrupt rise. Having dominated the conversation at the 2015 SXSW Interactive festival, livestreaming app Meerkat caught the attention of Twitter. Capitalizing on what it viewed as an emerging trend, Twitter bought rival livestreaming app Periscope just a few months later. It has since integrated Periscope streams into its main platform, in an attempt to further popularize the app.

Fast forward a few months to the end of 2015, and Facebook inevitably followed suit with the launch of Live Video . Overshadowed by its rivals, Meerkat quickly quickly abandoned livestreaming altogether . Periscope It is easy to see the attraction live broadcasts hold for social networks. Like viral videos, livestreams have the unique benefit of making viewers feel like they are ‘in the moment.’ A popular livestream has a snowball effect and, in turn, can quickly become a trending topic. Like the immediacy offered by Snapchat, the format can transform the mundane into the unmissable. Best of all, it allows social networks to lay claim to something original, which now autoplays on its flagship platform. The integration of the livestream on Twitter and Facebook has also made the two companies more open to striking broadcast deals with third-parties. In turn, having seen the success that BuzzFeed and its counterparts have had with video, both traditional and new media companies have been quick to embrace Periscope and Facebook Live. Nowhere is this theory better evidenced than Twitter’s recent deal to livestream NFL games .

This compromise on the part of the social media giants comes in the wake of the realization that they can no longer be relegated to the second, third, or fourth screen. They have to be the main attraction by showcasing viral, trending, or popular visual media — whether original or not — in real-time, fueling interaction and reaction in the process. This article was originally published on August 5, 2014, and updated on May 4, 2016, by Saqib Shah to reflect the widespread adoption of video-sharing platforms and livestreaming. Also watch: The History and Evolution of Social Media | Webdesigner Depot The History and Evolution of Social Media By WebdesignerDepot Staff • Posted Oct. 07, 2009 • Reading time: 19 minutes Social media has become an integral part of modern society. There are general social networks with user bases larger than the population of most countries. There are niche sites for virtually every special interest out there. There are sites to share photos, videos, status updates, sites for meeting new people and sites to connect with old friends. It seems there are social solutions to just about every need.

In this article, we’ll review the history and evolution of social media from its humble beginnings to the present day. Precursors to Social Media Usernets Usenet systems were first conceived of in 1979 by Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis. Usenets let users post articles or posts (referred to as “news”) to newsgroups. Usenets have no centralized server or dedicated administrator, setting them apart from most BBSs and forums. Usenets are mostly responsible for the development of newsreader clients, which are the precursor to RSS feed readers so commonly used to follow blogs and news sites today. Group sites such as Google Groups and Yahoo! Groups use many of the conventions established by the original usenet systems. BBSs (Bulletin Board Systems) The first BBSs came online in the late 70s. Originally these were primarily hosted on personal computers and users had to dial in through the host computer’s modem. Only one person at a time could gain access to the BBS. While there were legitimate BBSs, most were at least somewhat involved in illicit, illegal, or other shady practices.

Adult material, virus code, information and instructions for hacking and phreaking (phone hacking), and materials like The Anarchist’s Cookbook were commonly hosted on BBSs. But BBSs were the first type of sites that allowed users to log on and interact with one another, albeit in a much slower fashion than we currently do. Online Services After BBSs came “online services” like CompuServe and Prodigy. These were the first real “corporate” attempts at accessing the Internet. CompuServe was the first company to incorporate a chat program into their service. Prodigy was responsible for making online service more affordable (CompuServe had been prohibitively expensive for many, with charges of $6/hour plug long-distance fees that often made the service run $30/hour or more). Genie was an early online service created by a General Electric subsidiary (GEIS) in 1985. It ran through 1999 and was one of the earliest services available. It was a text-based service, and considered the first viable commercial competition to CompuServe. The service was created to make use of idle time-sharing mainframes after normal U.S. business hours.

GEnie offered games, shopping, mail, and forums (called RoundTables). There was even a print magazine associated with the service at one time. AOL started as an online service too and made great strides at making the Internet more universally accessible in the U.S. IRC, ICQ, and Instant Messaging IRC (Internet Relay Chat) was developed in 1988 and used for file sharing, link sharing and otherwise keeping in touch. It was really the father of instant messaging as we know it today. IRC was mostly UNIX-based though, limiting access to most people. ICQ was developed in the mid-90s and was the first instant messaging program for PCs. It was at least partly responsible for the adoption of avatars, abbreviations (LOL, BRB) and emoticons. Other IM clients soon followed. Early Social Networks Dating Sites Dating sites are sometimes considered the first social networks. The first dating sites started cropping up almost as soon as people started going online. They allowed users to create profiles (usually with photos) and to contact other users. Forums Online forums also played a large part in the evolution of the social web.

These were really descendents of the BBSs popular in the 70s and 80s, but usually came with a more user-friendly interface, making them easier for non-technical visitors to use. Various forum platforms, including vBulletin and phpBB , were developed, many of which are still used for forums. Forums remain a popular part of online culture, and many have made strides to add more social networking-type features (like profiles). While many people consider dating sites or sites like Classmates.com to be the first social networks, they don’t really fit the definition. Dating sites rarely allowed you to keep a friends list, neither did Classmates in its early years (and profiles were severely limited). The following sites were the first true social networks. Six Degrees Six Degrees was launched in 1997 and was the first modern social network. It allowed users to create a profile and to become friends with other users. While the site is no longer functional, at one time it was actually quite popular and had around a million members at its peak. In 2000 it was purchased for $125 million and in 2001 it was shut down.

AsianAvenue, MiGente, BlackPlanet These sites cropped up in the years following SixDegrees’ launch, between 1997 and 2001. They allowed users to create profiles and add friends (generally without needing approval to add people). Users could create professional, personal and dating profiles on these sites. While they were some of the earliest social networks, there were few innovations among them. LiveJournal LiveJournal started in 1999 and took a different approach to social networking. While Six Degrees allowed users to create a basically-static profile, LiveJournal was a social network built around constantly-updated blogs. LiveJournal encouraged its users to follow one another and to create groups and otherwise interact. It was really the precursor to the live updates we see in social networks currently. World of Warcraft / MMORPGS MMORPGS (Massively multiplayer online role-playing games) have become social networks in their own right. The most famous of these is World of Warcraft , where players interact both in the game world and on related forums and community sites. Social interaction within the games ranges from teams set up specifically for tactical reasons within the game to friendships to romances.

MMORPGS became popular in the early 2000s, though there were other online role-playing and other games prior to that. Major Advances in Social Networking The early 2000s brought some huge developments in social networking and social media. Friendster Friendster was really the first modern, general social network. Founded in 2002, Friendster is still a very active social network, with over 90 million registered users and 60+ million unique visitors each month. Most of Friendster’s traffic comes from Asia (90% of it). Friendster operated by allowing people to discover their friends and then friends-of-friends, and so on to expand their networks. Its goal was to be a safer place to meet new people than in real-life, as well as being faster. Friendster was, in part, a new kind of dating site. Instead of matching complete strangers based on shared interests, it operated on the assumption that people with shared friends and acquaintances would have a better chance than those who had no shared connection. Friendster was most popular with three different groups: gay men, attendess of Burning Man and bloggers.

Hi5 Hi5 is another major social network, established in 2003 and currently boasting more than 60 million active members according to their own claims. Profile privacy works a bit differently on Hi5, where a user’s network consists of not only their own contacts, but also second (friends of friends) and third (friends of friends of friends) degree contacts. Users can set their profiles to be seen only by their network members or by Hi5 users in general. While Hi5 is not particalarly popular in the U.S., it has a large user base in parts of Asia, Latin America and Central Africa. LinkedIn LinkedIn was founded in 2003 and was one of the first mainstream social networks devoted to business. Originally, LinkedIn allowed users to post a profile (basically a resume) and to interact through private messaging. They also work on the assumption that you should personally know the people you connect with on the site. Gradually, other features have been added, including groups, question and answer forums, and advanced profile features, including real-time updates. MySpace MySpace was founded in 2003 and by 2006 had grown to be the most popular social network in the world.

MySpace differentiated itself from competitors by allowing users to completely customize the look of their profiles. Users could also post music from artists on MySpace and embed videos from other sites on their profiles. Originally MySpace allowed communication through private messages, public comments posted to a user’s profile, and bulletins sent out to all of your friends. Blogs are also a big part of MySpace profiles, with each member automatically getting a blog. In 2006 MySpace introduced MySpace IM, an instant messaging client that lets users chat with their friends. Other recent additions to MySpace’s functionality include the addition of real-time status updates and a news feed showing friend activity. Facebook While Facebook started out as a Harvard-only social network back in 2004, it quickly expanded to other schools, then to high schools, businesses and eventually everyone (by 2006). In 2008 Facebook became the most popular social networking site, surpassing MySpace, and continues to grow. Facebook doesn’t allow the same kind of customization that MySpace does. Facebook does, however, allow users to post photos, videos and otherwise customize their profile content, if not the design.

Facebook has added a number of features over the past few years, including instant messaging/chat and apps (and their developer platform). Users have a few different methods of communicating with one another. Private messaging is available as well as writing on another user’s wall. Wall posts are visible to that user’s friends, but usually not to the general public. Users can easily change their privacy settings to allow different users to see different parts of their profile, based on any existing relationships (the basic privacy settings are “only friends”, “friends of friends”, and “everyone”). Users can post notes that are visible to all of their friends. Users can also comment on or, more recently, “like” the posts of their friends, and conversations often occur within the comment sections among multiple people. Other Major Social Networks Multiply , a “family-friendly” social network and media sharing site was established in 2004 and puts much more emphasis on security and privacy than many other networks. Multiply users have the option to set security levels on each item they post, making things public, network-only, or invite-only.

Orkut , launched in January 2004, is Google’s social network, and while it’s not particularly popular in the U.S., it’s very popular in Brazil and India, with more than 65 million users. Orkut lets users share media, status updates, and communicate through IM. Kontain , which launched in 2008, works a bit differently than many social networks, putting the focus on usability and allowing users to follow each other through photos, videos, and music, rather than just simple status updates. They also actively recruit businesses to sign up, promotin their service as a way to connect with customers. Niche Social Networks As social networking grew, niche sites began cropping up for specific interest groups. There are now social networks for virtually every hobby, passion, interest, industry and group that you could imagine. Ning Ning is a platform for creating niche social networks. Networks are hosted by Ning but can take on their own personality and can even pay to have their own branding instead of the Ning brand. New users can either create social networks for any niche they choose or join any of more than 1.5 million existing networks. Ning was the first widely-used social networking platform.

It’s biggest advantage in the market was that it made it incredibly simple for even non-technical users to set up their own social network. While most other social networking platforms required coding and programming knowledge, Ning required neither of those. Company-Sponsored Social Networks A number of niche social networking sites have been developed by corporations in all sorts of industries. Authonomy is one example; it’s a writers’ network hosted by the UK division of Harper Collins that has attracted thousands of hopeful writers from all over the globe, but plenty of other companies have created their own networks. While some of these have active groups, many do not, and end up being shut down due to a lack of activity. Media Sharing Social media isn’t just limited to social networking sites. Sharing photos, videos, and other multimedia content is also a popular social media activity. Photobucket Photobucket was the first major photo sharing site, launched in 2003. Photobucket allows users to share photos publically or in password-protected albums. They allow users 500MB of storage (lowered from 1GB in August of 2009).

Pro accounts get 10GB of storage (lowered from 100GB to 25GB in July of ’08 and then to 10GB in August of ’09). Photobucket also hosts video content. In 2007, Photobucket was purchased by Fox Interactive Media (a News Corporation subsidiary). It was rumored to have sold for as much as $250 million, though terms of the sale were never disclosed. Flickr Flickr has become a social network in its own right in recent years. They claim to host more than 3.6 billion images as of June 2009. Flickr also has groups, photo pools, and allows users to create profiles, add friends, and organize images and video into photo sets/albums. One of Flickr’s major advantages is that they allow users to license their photos through Creative Commons, as well as retaining all copyrights. Flickr has also recently launched a collection called “The Commons”, which features archived photos and images from a variety of museums and other institutions under a “no known restrictions” license (basically meaning the photos are believed to be in the public domain).

YouTube YouTube was the first major video hosting and sharing site, launched in 2005. Users can upload videos up to 10 minutes long and share them through YouTube or by embedding them on other websites (social networks, blogs, forums, etc.). YouTube now allows users to upload HD videos and recently launched a service to provide TV shows and movies under license from their copyright holders. YouTube’s major social features include ratings, comments, and the option to subscribe to the channels of a user’s favorite video creators. Revver Revver took a slightly different approach to video hosting and sharing. While YouTube, Metacafe, and most other video sharing sites let you post videos for free and didn’t pay content creators for any advertising revenues their videos generated, Revver has been sharing revenue from the start. Revver splits the revenue generated by a video 50/50 with that video’s creator. Some other video sharing and hosting sites are moving in the direction of revenue sharing, but Revver still remains the primary one that does it with all content on the site. Social News and Bookmarking Sharing photos and videos wasn’t isn’t the only kind of information sharing happening with social media.

The advent of social news and bookmarking sites in the mid-2000’s brought about a whole new way of see what’s going on in the world and discovering interesting content. News became more widely available thanks to sites like Delicious, Digg, and Reddit, who allowed users to share any news or other content they found interesting with a much wider audience than they might have otherwise had. Delicious Delicious (aka, Del.icio.us) is a social bookmarking site founded in 2003. It allows its users to bookmark any content they find online, tag that content, and then share it with other users. Users can search for bookmarks or browse for them via tags. Delicious also allows users to view the most popular content among other users, as well as up-and-coming content, not unlike most social news sites. Digg Digg was founded in 2004 by Kevin Rose, Ron Gorodetzky, Jay Adelson, and Owen Byrne. Digg users can share links to anything online and other users can vote that content up (“dig”) or down (“bury”). Users can also comment on content posted by others and keep a friends list.

Digg has undergone a lot of controversy in its day, including criticism about the power the top 100 Digg users have over what becomes popular on the site. The “Digg Effect”—when content makes it to the front page, thereby sending a huge influx of traffic to that site, often overloading its servers—is also well-known and often frustrating to those unprepared for the sudden popularity. Reddit Reddit is another social news site founded in 2005. Reddit operates in a similar fashion to Digg, allowing users to vote content up or down. Users can view popular items, new items, and “controversial” items (presumably those items that have received a lot of both up and down votes). Reddit, like Digg, also allows users to comment on posted items. Real Time Updates Real-time updates have become the new norm in social media. With the advent of Twitter in 2006, status updates have become the new norm in social networking. Virtually all major social networks now allow real-time updates. Twitter Twitter was founded in 2006 and gained a lot of popularity during the 2007 SxSW (South by Southwest) conference.

Tweets trippled during the conference, from 20k per day to 60k. Twitter has developed a cult-like following and has a number of famous users (Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore, Soleil Moon Frye, MC Hammer, Oprah, Martha Stewart, and many, many more). Twitter has also spawned a number of third-party sites and apps, turning it into more of a platform than a single service. There are Twitter clients for updating and managing followers; services that track Twitter trends; and services for posting photos and videos directly to Twitter. Posterous Posterous is the newest major microblogging application, started by Y Combinator in May 2009. Users post content via email. Emails can include attached photos, MP3s and other file types that are also posted. No initial signup is needed, setting it apart from most other social media services. Tumblr Tumblr is sort of a cross between a lifestreaming application and a microblogging platform. Tumblr was founded in 2007 and had around 75,000 tumblebloggers switch to the service immediately.

The site lets users post photos, video, text, audio, links, conversations, and other content on blog-like sites. There are mobile applications available for posting to Tumblr, making it ideal for lifestreaming. Tumblr is also very easy to use, making it well-suited to less technical users. It’s similar to Twitter and other microblogging platforms in the way that it lets you follow other Tumblr users and see their updates in a specialized dashboard feed. Users can also “heart” (favorite) other Tumblr users’ content and reblog posts from other users, keeping the original credit intact. Other Services Adopt Real-Time Updates As mentioned before, virtually every social networking site now allows for status updates. Facebook has incorporated status updates into their interface for years. MySpace adopted the practice more than a year ago. And most recently, LinkedIn has started to allow users to update their status. Real-time updates allow users to stay connected to their friends and family on a constant basis and often improve relationships between people. When you constantly know what’s going on with friends and family, it’s easier to discover shared interests, activities, and other information that might never have come out in real-life conversations. This can lead to stronger relationships offline.

The iPhone’s Role in Real-Time Updates The iPhone can be largely credited for the rise in popularity of real-time updates. Prior to the iPhone’s launch, mobile browsers were clunky at best, and virtually unusable at worst. But the iPhone made it easy and even fun to browse the web from a mobile device. Add apps for virtually every social network to the mix and it became possible for users to update anytime, from anywhere. Other phones have followed suit and there are now mutliple devices available that let users easily update their status on the go (including posting photos and video updates). The iPhone has taken such a huge role in social media that there are now social networks only available on the iPhone. iRovr is a social networking app specifically for the iPhone/iPod Touch. It allows users to post photos, updates, links (including to YouTube videos), create polls, subscribe to RSS feeds and more. It was launched in 2007 and is still going strong two years later. Lifestreaming and Lifecasting Real-time updates have led to an increase in the number of people who are now lifecasting or lifestreaming virtually everything they do.

While some opt to lifestream by aggregating their online activities in a single place (such as with FriendFeed). Ustream.tv Ustream was founded in the summer of 2006 and has become the streaming video host of choice for celebrities like Ashton Kutcher and Soleil Moon Frye. While most Ustream users only go live occasionally, there are channels that are live around the clock (mostly security cameras, animal cameras, traffic cameras, and other stationary feeds). Ustream allows viewers to post comments and ask questions directly to the feed host during live broadcasts, and this interactivity often engages users to a greater extent than other video sites where videos are posted after they’ve been filmed instead of being streamed live. Justin.tv Justin.tv is a streaming video host founded in October 2006 that lets lifecasters and live show creators to broadcast to hundreds or thousands of Internet users. iJustine is probably Justin.tv’s most public user, lifecasting practically her entire life on the site at one time (she appears to be lifecasting a bit less recently, though she’s still very active on the site).

There are more than 400,000 channels on Justin.tv, and they get more than 41 million unique visitors each month. FriendFeed FriendFeed , which launched in 2007 and was recently purchased by Facebook, allows you to integrate most of your online activities in one place (Twitter, RSS feeds, and Flickr, among others). It’s also a social network in its own right, with the ability to create friends lists, post updates, and otherwise communicate. Other Lifestreaming Sites There are a number of other lifestreaming sites out there that people are using. Most can be integrated into your blog or website to show your visitors all of your activities around the web. There are even some dedicated blog plugins for lifestreaming. WP Lifestream is one such plugin, specifically for WordPress. It lets you integrate your profiles from Facebook, Flickr, Last.fm and Wordie right out of the box, and you can add additional modules for integrating more feeds.

Profilactic.com is another lifestreaming application that lets you integrate feeds from 190 different websites, including Blippr, Delicious, Digg, deviantART, Dopplr, Facebook, Flickr, Last.fm, LiveJournal, MySpace, Pandora, Revver, StumbleUpon, Twitter, Tumblr, and more. Sweetcron is a similar app, though it’s opensource and you host it on your own servers. Social Everything It seems that nowadays there are social and user-generated sites for just about every activity you can imagine. There are social shopping sites . Social financial planning sites . Sites for getting book, movie, app, and other reviews. Sites to share your goals and meet like-minded people. Sites to plan your travels and share them with others. And sites to help you make decisions on just about anything. Social media has become a huge part of the lives of millions of people worldwide. Whether it’s something as simple as looking up reviews of movies from real, live people (instead of professional movie reviewers) or getting advice on major life decisions, there are social sites out there to provide you with the information you seek.

Even on general-purpose social networks and social media sites like Twitter there are thousands of ways to get input on just about anything. Instead of using Google the next time you have a question about something, try asking on Twitter. A lot of the time you get better information from the crowd there in less time than pouring over pages of search results. Social Media Concerns and Criticism As social media has grown in popularity and become mainstream, it has been faced with growing controversy and criticism. The main criticisms seem to fall along a few lines: Social media can be used by stalkers; Social media can be used by child predators; and, Social media sites open up privacy and security concerns. While there is only so much social media sites can do about the first two, there is a growing trend among many sites to bolster the privacy policies and make users feel more secure. Social Media Used by Stalkers Facebook and other social media sites have come under attack for making it easier for stalkers to track their victims or even to find new ones. This kind of accusation is not entirely unfounded. Many social media users don’t take advantage of privacy settings and leave their entire profiles public.

While this is often a good idea for professional profiles where you want to make connections with people you don’t necessarily know, personal profiles can benefit from hiding some information from public display. Social networks make these privacy settings available to users to help prevent stalkers and predators from being able to see their updates. But they can’t force users to use them, so in the end much of the responsibility falls to the individual users, not the networks themselves. Social Media Used by Child Predators MySpace is the most publically attacked social networks accused of being a haven for child molesters and pornographers, but the site, and other social networks, have made great strides in protecting the identities and information of minors using their sites. Again, this is one of those situations where much of the problem came from users not making their profiles private. MySpace took a major step to prevent predators from friending underage teens by requiring friend requesters to know the email address or another personal identifier in order to send a friend request to a minor. They also require the profiles of teens under the age of 16 to be private, not allowing non-friend users to view them. Other sites have taken similar steps.

Privacy Concerns Facebook recently came under attack for changes to its privacy policy that were worded ambiguously enough to effectively grant rights to Facebook to use any of your content, private or public, for their own purposes (such as advertising) even after you’d delected your profile. While the company maintains that was never their intent and it was simply unfortunate wording, the backlash was severe enough that Facebook changed their privacy policy back to its previous version and then solicited user input for revisions. It was a harsh lesson in how concerned many users are about the information they provide online. When you consider that many people post information about all aspects of their lives online, mostly on social media sites, it’s no wonder many are concerned about what companies can do with that information. Social networks and other sites have to rapidly respond to user concerns over privacy and security. With the information in an average social media profile, it would not be inconceivable for a hacker to illegally gain enough information about a person to steal their identity or otherwise cause problems. Security concerns have also cropped up as average people have found their profiles hacked and embarrassing information posted about them.

While this type of thing was once relatively confined to celebrities and well-known people (or people who had a personal vendetta against them), it has become more widespread and it’s not unheard of for regular people to be targeted (such as this woman on Facebook recently). The Role of Social Media in Pop Culture Social media has, in the past year or two, become a mainstream online activity. In 2007, social media activities overtook pornography as the most popular online activity in the U.S. (the two industries continue to battle it out, alternately gaining or losing ground on a monthly basis). Celebrities now use Twitter, Facebook, and other social networks on a regular basis. And it’s not just their publicists—stars are updating their status themselves and interacting with fans on a daily basis. It’s not uncommon to see Twitter-inspired t-shirts, and there has been at least one “fail-whale” tattoo (I’m sure there are more out there). When Twitter and Facebook both suffered a DDOS attack in early August ’09, there was a real sense of loss among many users until the sites were back up.

Social media has become an integral part of how people communicate, stay in touch, keep on top of new developments, and otherwise connect with the world around them. The Evolution of Social Media Social media has come a long way since the days of BBSs and IRC chats. And social media continues to evolve on a daily basis. With major social networks and social media sites making changes and improvements on an almost daily basis, it’s sure to keep evolving in coming years. The one thing we can be pretty sure of at this point is that social media is not just a phase, and likely won’t go away any time soon…at least until something better comes along.

Question: Online social networking website Facebook was founded in 2004 in which US state?
Answer: Massachusetts