Can You Recall When Social Media Started?

Do you still remember when it was when social media and social networking hit the online world like a storm? 

I did some online research about the history of social media and I was really surprised to know that it dates back to some 40 years ago!
 

Can You Recall From What Year You Started Dabbling With Social Networking?

(You’re not compelled to reveal your age at your detriment but should you desire so, just consider it as a sign of being technologically-advanced! Nothing wrong with being a prime mover! It always pays to be first, right? )

I remembered starting with IRC or the Internet Relay Chat in the early 1990s. You have to log in to different “channels” with your “nick” (short for nickname, I believe) and hashtags (#) were already the rage then! (Twitter is really not an original!) I can still remember typing #JOIN if you want to enter a particular channel; #WHOIS if you want to know more about the person you are chatting with; and, #ASL if you’re asking for age, sex, and location details.

Personally, I don’t think people were very honest then about sharing details and information in IRC unless you join a channel where everybody already knows everyone but it was really a good avenue for group communication in real time. The anonymity that clothed all its users was actually one of its selling points. You can be whoever you want to be.

The next thing down the line in the history of social media isGeoCities. For the love of me, I just cannot recall if I made my own site using GeoCities but I remembered being part of this community as well.

Needless to say, at the turn of the new millennium, the .com phenomenon turned the world upside down and to date, we have been invaded with a lot of social media ranging from Friendster to MySpace to Facebook to YouTube to Twitter and of course to the Google phenomena that recently culminated with its Google +1.

The course of Internet history has drastically changed then. It would seem, now, thatif you don’t have a presence in the online world, then, you are virtually non-existent, pun intended.

Just to refresh your memory, here’s a timeline of the history of social media that I found and although I couldn’t really relate to some of the media mentioned, it gives us a pretty good picture of social media’s journey.

Share your thoughts by leaving a comment below. If you enjoyed this post, don’t forget to share, retweet, or bookmark! Thank you!

To Your Success,
Elmar Sandyck