Technology began to change very rapidly in the 20th Century. After the first super computers were created in the 1940s, scientists and engineers began to develop ways to create networks between those computers, and this would later lead to the birth of the Internet.
The earliest forms of the Internet, such as CompuServe, were developed in the 1960s. Primitive forms of email were also developed during this time. By the 70s, networking technology had improved, and 1979′s UseNet allowed users to communicate through a virtual newsletter.
By the 1980s, home computers were becoming more common and social media was becoming more sophisticated. Internet relay chats, or IRCs, were first used in 1988 and continued to be popular well into the 1990′s.
The first recognizable social media site, Six Degrees, was created in 1997. It enabled users to upload a profile and make friends with other users. In 1999, the first blogging sites became popular, creating a social media sensation that’s still popular today.
After the invention of blogging, social media began to explode in popularity. Sites like MySpace and LinkedIn gained prominence in the early 2000s, and sites like Photobucket and Flickr facilitated online photo sharing. YouTube came out in 2005, creating an entirely new way for people to communicate and share with each other across great distances.
By 2006, Facebook and Twitter both became available to users throughout the world. These sites remain some of the most popular social networks on the Internet. Other sites like Tumblr, Spotify, Foursquare and Pinterest began popping up to fill specific social networking niches.
Today, there is a tremendous variety of social networking sites, and many of them can be linked to allow cross-posting. This creates an environment where users can reach the maximum number of people without sacrificing the intimacy of person-to-person communication. We can only speculate about what the future of social networking may look in the next decade or even 100 years from now, but it seems clear that it will exist in some form for as long as humans are alive.
This article was originally published on Small Business Trends
he future of social media is rarely predictable. Pinterest had an unexpected explosive growth over the last year. There will always be surprises, but there are also some emerging and continuing social media trends that we can both track and predict with a certain degree of confidence.
Emerging Markets
Social media usage is constantly rising everywhere but growth will continue to be far higher in emerging markets, as Internet penetration and more forms of online engagement continue to catch up with those in more established markets.
According to eMarketer figures in 2011 and 2012, India and Indonesia were the two biggest emerging markets. In 2011 the two countries experienced a social network user growth of 51.5 percent and 51.4 percent respectively. Compare this to the US and UK markets, which grew by only 9.8 percent and 9.9 percent.
In 2013 India and Indonesia are still expected to see the biggest growth, at 37.9 percent and 28.8 percent respectively. The established markets will pretty much plateau, with usage in the UK predicted to rise by 7 percent and the U.S. by just 4.1 percent.
By region the Middle East and Africa, Asia-Pacific and Latin America will see the largest growth rates. The implications for social media marketers are pretty clear: get into emerging markets before they catch up with the rest of us.
Mobile Growth
Facebook recently stated “While most of our mobile users also access Facebook through personal computers, we anticipate that the rate of growth in mobile usage will exceed the growth in usage through personal computers for the foreseeable future and that the usage through personal computers may be flat or continue to decline in certain markets.”
Many commentators predict 2015 as the year when mobile search and online activity will overtake overall static usage worldwide. For social media that may happen very soon.
Nielsen’s Social Media Report 2012 found that 43 percent of U.S. users use smartphones to access social media, with 16 percent connecting from tablets. Users have also increased their social app usage by 7
6 percent. This meant they were now spending seven times more minutes on apps than on the mobile web.