Social media is an everyday thing in people’s lives. There are more than 65 known social media platforms. According to Marketing Tech, an average person will have 7.6 accounts with a 98% chance of a person using only 1 social media platform. So, ever wonder how social media started?
In 550 B.C., letters were invented. Today, the United States Postal Service (USPS) delivers messages to people based on the addresses. According to Drew Hendricks, writer of “Complete History of Social Media: Then And Now,” he stated, “In 1772, the telegraph was invented. This allowed messages to be delivered over a long distance far faster than a horse and rider could carry them. Although telegraph messages were short, they were a revolutionary way to convey news and information.”
Back then, inventors were trying their hardest to create something useful and meaningful in humanity. There have been other forms of communications before social media was created in the late 90’s.
The radio and the telephone were discovered in the 1890’s. It was the start of long-distance communication. As for computers, those weren’t invented until 1822 by Charles Babbage, an English Mathematician. According to Kim Ann Zimmerman, the writer of “History of Computers: A Brief Timeline,” Babbage wanted to make a stream calculate table that could make numbers.
In the 1940’s, the internet was created by engineers and scientists to connect computers. It’s unbelievable that it took several inventors to make something “out of this worldwide web.”
The first social media platform that was created was Six Degrees. It was founded in 1997, for users to upload a picture of themselves and start connecting with other users as friends, according to Hendricks. This led to blogging in the late 90’s, which increased connections between many computer users at the time.
In the 2000’s, Myspace was the most popular social media site until Facebook. Facebook was only for Harvard college students until it grew popular and more recognized on the web. It was founded in 2004. Furthermore, YouTube was founded in 2005 as a social media site to upload and share videos. And Twitter was founded in 2006 as a “small” blogging and messaging (known as tweets) platform to connect with many users. More social media accounts continued to grow in the late 2000’s and into the 2010’s.
