Historical Evolution of Social Media: An Overview

Manish Dhingraa, Rakesh K. Mudgalb

a
Research Scholar, TMIMT, Teerthanker Mahaveer University, Moradabad, 244001, India.
[email protected]
b
Vice Chancellor, Teerthanker Mahaveer University, Moradabad, 244001, India.
[email protected]

AR T IC LE IN FO AB STR ACT

Social media has become the buzz word of marketing nowadays. Today it is difficult to visualise the
Article history:
Received 00 December 00 effectiveness of promotion mix of any company without social media. Starting from basic means of
Received in revised form 00 January 00 exchanging information, it grew to development of means of communication whose purpose was
Accepted 00 February 00 manifold. With the advent of social media customers and businesses have become well connected with
each other. Business to business, business to customer, and customer to customer communication has
Keywords: been great facilitated by social media. Various types of social media platforms have evolved over a
Social Media period of time, which have become more sophisticated in terms of technology, more effective in terms
Bulletin Board Systems
of capability to influence the customers and more efficient in terms of reaching the customers in
UseNet
optimum time. All these developments took place over many years and have passed through several
stages. The aim of this paper is to capture the historical developments of social media over a period of
time.

© 2019Uttaranchal University, Dehradun. Hosting by Elsevier SSRN (ISN)All rights reserved.

Peer review under responsibility of Uttaranchal University, Dehradun.

1. Introduction

Social media which is defined as “a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that
allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content” (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010) have make a revolutionary change in the lives of individuals as
well as promotional strategies of organizations. With social media people can undertake several activities like collaborating, exchanging information,
sharing and sending messages over an electronic medium, engaging collectively and interacting, sharing contents like ideas, t ext, photos, images and
video and they are creators and co-creators of this material (Thackeray et al., 2008) and also it has become a mandatory element in many companies’
marketing strategy rather than merely an optional element of the promotional mix (Hanna et al., 2011). The purpose of this pa per is to provide historical
roots and evolution of social media. The developments in the field of social media have been presented chronologically in the subsequent sub sections of
the paper followed by a brief summary of the important developments in social media. Studying history of social media can hel p us better understand just
how much, and how quickly, the world around us is changing.

2. Early Times
The primitive postal system dated back to 550 B.C when messages were delivered over long distances by the horse riders, evolv ed into a sophisticated
mode of communication over a period of time. In 1792 Telegraph was invented, which facilitated long-distance transmission of messages without the
physical exchange of an object. Developed in 1865, the pneumatic post which in order to carry capsules from one area to anoth er used the underground
pressurized air tubes and was a fast way of delivering letters. Subsequently the revolutionary means of communication viz tel ephone and radio were
invented in 1876 and 1895.

3. Developments in Twentieth Century

Twentieth century marked revolutionary change in technology. Super computers came up in 1940s and thereafter networks between the computers started
developing which later led to the development of internet (Hendricks, 2013). Important developments are mentioned below:

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3.1 Bulletin Board Systems (BBS)

In late 1970s, Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) came into inception which were the first kind of social networking site that perm itted its users to
log on and interact with one another, similar to the way we do currently although at a much fast pace now. Users were accommodated on
personal computers and get dial in through the modem of host computer (Emerson, 1983). There are various kind of technologies prevailing that
support virtual community communication. But, if we go through the communities which are interacting through “bulletin board technology”,
the user can send a message to anyone in the community or even to the general public. Computer -based message systems especially the computer
mail systems that support some form of BBS were found very useful. The computer mail system covers diversified areas viz, “organising the
service”, “accessing messages from personal workstations”, “naming”, “translation between different mail systems and usage of computer mail”
and also “bulletin board systems”. Figures collected from various computers interacting through UseNet indicated that 25% of the users practice
bulletin board system whose usage frequency is at par with the popular computer software packages (Edighoffer, 1986). Schroed er et al. (1984)
reported that “Grapevine” which is a computer mail system, served more than 4,400 users in 1983, with each user sending two m essages and
reading eight messages on an average daily. Bulletin boards also offered a unique feature that anyone could witn ess the community interaction
without actually registering on it. This conversation in the community can also be preserved indefinitely, providing the potential members to
access the interaction before joining. Although in order to avoid congestion, in a chat room, at a time only a few numbers of people can
communicate, whereas a huge number of people can engage in the various aspects of a bulletin board community at a given time (Ridings &
Gefen, 2004).

3.2 UseNet
UseNet, one among the oldest computer network communications systems initiated in the year 1979 almost a decade prior to the development of
World Wide Web. These newsgroups were developed as discussion forums which allowed the users to exchange user -generated content and
were a prominent source of consumer information (Bickart& Schindler, 2001). UseNet permitted its users to communicate with each other with
the help of a virtual newsletter (Hendricks, 2013); it was required to develop the newsreader clients, an antecedent to RSS ( Rich Site Summary)
feed readers which normally follow blogs and news sites and allow its users to post articles or posts to newsgroups. UseNet d idn’t have an
administrator or a centralised server which distinguished them from Bulletin Board Systems. Group sites like Googl e Groups and Yahoo! Groups
practice a number of conventions given by the UseNet systems (Emerson, 1983).

3.3 Online Services

Online services like Prodigy and CompuServe, considered to be the first real “corporate” attempt at accessing the Internet. C ompuServe,
developed in 1969 was the earliest form of internet and was a pioneer to offer chat service to its users. Its competitor , Prodigy offered a similar
service at a much affordable price (Hendricks, 2013). They were followed by Genie (General Electric Network for Information E xchange)
launched by General Electric in 1985 which was a text base service. It also offered features like games, shopping, mails and a forum known as
‘Round Tables’ (Emerson, 1983) and was considered to be the competitor of CompuServe. In 1986 Listserv was launched which was considered
to be the first electronic mailing list software application, earlier to which email lists were managed manually. Listserv allowed the sender to
send an email which may reach several receivers at the same time. Alongside Genie in 1980s, WELL (Whole Earth Lectronic Link) , Listserv,
and IRC (Internet Relay Chat) were launched. “WELL” was one among the oldest operating virtual communities created by Stewart Brand and
Larry Brilliant at Sausalito, California (Ritholz, 2010).

3.4 Internet Relay Chat

Internet Relay Chat, invented in 1988, offered features like sharing of files, links and keeping in touch. It fast emerged as an instant message
sharing program for personal computers (Emerson, 1983). Internet Relay Chat, a type of real-time chat, also called as “internet text messaging

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or synchronous conferencing” is created for group communication (Ritholz, 2010). Reaching the 1980s, with home computers becoming
popular, social media also became more sophisticated and Internet relay chats, continued to be quite popular during the 1990’s (Hendricks,
2013).

3.5 Early Social Networks

In 1995, the social networking site Classmates.com was launched followed by SixDegrees.com in 1997. These sites were considered to be the
pioneer recognizable social network sites in which the users could create their profile, list and surf their friends (Winder, 2007). Few features of
SixDegrees were similar to a few dating sites which existed earlier for example AIM and ICQ buddy which allowed people to use individual
features of SNS (Social Networking Sites). Six Degrees offered multiple features on a sin gle site for the first time and it advertised itself as a
tool using which the users may connect with each other and send messages. Although SixDegrees.com had several millions of users, it closed
down in the year 2000. A number of service providers like Asian Avenue, Black Planet, and MiGente came up during 1997 to 2001, combining
different features like creating profile, sending friend requests and identifying friends on their personal profiles (Boyd & Ellison, 2007). In the
year 1999, Live Journal was launched in which people could mark others as their friends and invite them to follow their journals. In the same
year Korean virtual worlds site “Cyworld” was launched followed by the Swedish web community “LunarStorm” with similar featur es like
guestbook, friend list and diary pages (Boyd & Ellison, 2007).

4. Developments 2000 Onwards

Various remarkable developments have been witnessed in the field of social media since 2000 onwards.

4.1 Social Networks

The launch of Ryze.com in the year 2001 marked the next wave of social networking sites as it was more oriented towards business and helped
its users to leverage their business networks (Festa, 2003). Technology started to catch up 2002 onwards when Friendster was launched which
changed the game by giving its users control over whom they want to connect with rather than a computer managed environment (Winder,
2007). Founders of the popular sites viz: Ryze, Tribe.net, LinkedIn, and Friendster were closely connected with each other, b elieved that they
will never become business rivals and would support each other (Festa, 2003). Ryze met an end as it could never attain mass popularity.
Tribe.net concentrated on a niche; Friendster, the most popular site among these contemporaries, launched in 2002 to compete with a dating site
Match.com also proved to be a disappointment (Cohen, 2003). Winder (2007) reported that Friendster expanded its services by p roviding more
facilities to its users like control over whom they interacted with rather than simply providing them a computer-managed environment.
According to Mew (2006) only those could join this site who were invited by any current user of Friendster. Friendster’s popu larity plunged
with over 300,000 users leaving it due to technical and social problems. Out of the four popular networking sites, LinkedIn sustained
successfully as a provider of business service and by assisting people to harness their social networks for jobs (Boyd, 2004) . There was an
influx of social networking sites 2003 onwards. Shirky (2003) social software analyst coined the term “YASNS (Yet Another Social
Networking Service)’’to all such sites.
Facebook came into inception in 2004 as “Harvard only site” which later opened up for students for high school and then to th ose older than 13
years of age (Boyd, 2007). Facebook and Twitter, both became widely available to the users across the world by 2006 and continued to be among
the most popular social networking sites. Some social networking sites like Pinterest, Foursquare, Tumblr and Spotify cat ered to specific niches
(Hendricks, 2013).
With the growth of social media and user-generated content, more social networking sites based on sharing of content like FM (music), YouTube
(video sharing) and Flickr (photographs sharing) came up (Boyd & Ellison, 2007). Some websites became popular to the extent of becoming the
national social media like that of Google’s Orkut which was termed by Fragoso (2006) as “Brazilian Invasion”. Orkut leveraged on other SNSs
like Friendster on the ground that it does not provide information about the recent visitors to a profile which was considered to be a lure on Orkut

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as it permits to snoop into other users’ profiles, scrapbook and albums (Fragoso, 2006). MySpace gained popularity in the yea r 2003 leveraging
on the rumour that Friendster is going to charge its users. As a result, the users joined MySpace as an alternative. As an added advant age,
MySpace added features which distinguished it from others social sites first of all on the basis of user demand it is regular ly adding features
(Boyd, 2006) and secondly by permitting users to personalize their pages. Teenagers joined MySpace en-masse in 2004. One of the
differentiation features offered by MySpace was that users could customize their profile and provide their det ailed information along with their
interests; users could also download music from MySpace which has a special profile for musical artists (Natta, 2010). These individual sites
became popular in specific regions of the world like “Friendster” got momentum in the Pacific Islands, “Orkut” before gaining popularity in
India was in Brazil as the most popular site (Madhavan, 2007). “Mixi” became popular in Japan, “Lunar Storm” grew in Sweden, “Hyves”
gained popularity in Dutch, “Grono” got famous in Poland, “Hi5” became popular in Europe, Latin America, and South America. “Bebo”
became popular in Australia, New Zealand, and United Kingdom. QQ, the Chinese messaging service became popular worldwide by a dding
profiles and making friends visible (McLeod, 2006). “Facebook” gained popularity as a social networking site across several markets, viz:
Malaysia, Philippines, Hong Kong, Australia, Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam and New Zealand. On October 24, 2007, 1.6% share o f Facebook
was purchased by Microsoft and thus Microsoft getting rights to place international advertisements on Facebook (Stone, 2007). By the third
quarter of 2017, monthly active users of Facebook had reached 2.07 billion (Statistica, 2017) as compared to July 2010, when it had 500 million
active users (The Guardian, 2010), thus verifying the fact that the statistics of users of this site is on the rise. Instagram reach ed the count 500
million users in the first half of 2016 (Murgia, 2016).Besides these many social networking sites and social media platforms like Periscope,
Minds, Gab.ai, Mastodon etc. emerged during past few years. Important milestones in the development of social media is given in the Table 1
below.
Table 1: Summary of various important developments in the evolution of social media

S.No Year Important Inventions/ Description Name of

Developments Inventor(s)/
Founder(s)
1 1792 Telegraph A device of sending messages by visual signals, with the help of towers and Joseph Henry
pivoting shutters, messages were delivered much quickly than a horse over a
long distance.
Morse code A way used in telecommunication for sending text as a series in two different Samuel F. B. Morse
signal durations with clicks, on-off tones, or lights that can be easily interpreted.
2 1836 Pneumatic mail A device to send letters with pressurized air tubes. William Murdoch

4 1876 Telephone A communication device that allow two users to talk to each other when they Alexander Graham
are too far. Bell
5 1895 Radio A device transmitting signals by electromagnetic waves. Guglielmo Marconi
6 1969 CompuServe The first commercial online service in United States, the earliest form of Jeffrey M. Wilkins
internet was developed.
7 1971 The first email A text message sends as part of a program for ARPANET. Ray Tomlinson
8 1978 Bulletin Board system Computer terminals that permit users to share or exchange messages on a Ward Christensen
(BBS) network. and Randy Suess.
9 1979 Usenet Newsgroups that allowed the users to exchange user-generated content. Tom Truscott and
Jim Ellis
10 1986 LISTSERV First email list management program. Eric Thomas
11 1988 Internet Relay Chat A chatting system based on client/server software and based on certain rules Jarkko Oikarinen
and conventions.
12 1989 World wide web A space created for information where Uniform Resource Locators find web Tim Berners-Lee
resources like documents etc. interlinked by hypertext links, and can be

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accessed through the Internet.

13 1994 (First link.net A website in which posts are published on a regular basis and displayed in Justin Hall
blog was reverse chronological order.
created)
14 1995 Classmates A social networking service designed to help users to find their classmates. Randy Conrads
15 1997 Six Degrees A social network that permits people to create their profile and socialize with Andrew Weinreich
others.
Cyworld A South Koreansocial network service to build social relations among people. Dong-Hyung Lee

Mixi An online Japanese social networking service. Kenji Kasahara

16 1999 QQ An instant messaging software service provide microblogging, voice chat Shenzhen Tencent
software, music, movies, online social games, shopping.
Blogger A blog-publishing service that permits multi-user blogs with time-sequenced Pyra Labs
entries.
LiveJournal A social networking service where users can keep a blog, diary or journal. Brad Fitzpatrick

17 2000 Lunar Storm A social networking website for teenagers from Sweden which is commercially Rickard Eriksson
advertisement-financed.
18 2001 Ryze A social networking website designed to build connections between business Adrian Scott
professionals, specifically upcoming entrepreneurs.
19 2002 Friendester A website that permit users to contact other members, share videos, photos, Jonathan Abrams
messages via networks.
LinkedIn First network devoted to business is employment and business oriented Reid Hoffman, Allen
professional networking service that helps employers to post jobs and job Blue, Konstantin
seekers to post their CVs in response via internet or mobile apps. Guericke, EricLy,
Jean-Luc Vaillant
Photobucket Foremost important photosharing site which is a media storage site that permits Alex Welch, Darren
20 2003 people to upload photos and video to member’s personal account and share it Crystal
(Social with others.
networking Tribe.net A social networking site for tribe (group) of friends. Paul Martino, Mark
andBookmark Pincus, and Valerie
ing sites Syme.
appear) Delicious A social bookmarkingweb service that store, share, and discover Joshua Schachter and
webbookmarks. Peter Gadjokov

Myspace A social networking website designed for collaborating network of friends, Chris DeWolfe, Tom
blogs, personal profiles, groups, music, photos and videos submitted by users. Anderson, Jon Hart

Facebook A social networkingwebsite that permits to send messages, create profiles, Mark Zuckerberg
upload photos and videos by users who are registered on it and also promotes
and facilitates interaction between friends, family and colleagues.
Orkut A social networking site that enables its users to meet their friends both old and Orkut Buyukkokten
21 2004 new ones and help users to maintain existing relationships.
Hyves A Dutch social networking site for meeting with friends. Raymond Spanjar
and Floris Rost Van
Tonningen
Hi5 A San Francisco based social networking site. RamuYalamanchani

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Bebo A social networking website for fun activities. Michel and

XochiBirch
22 2005 YouTube A video sharing platform that permits users to upload their videos and watch Chad Hurley, Steve
videos which are posted by other users. Chen, and Jawed
Karim
Twitter A Social networking and online news service on which people post and interact Jack Dorsey, Noah
with “tweets”. Glass, BizStone, Evan
Williams
23 2006

Spotify A music and podcast streaming platform pays royalties on the basis of number Daniel Ek, Martin
of artists' streams out of total songs streamed. Lorentzon

SlideShare A service that permits users to upload files privately or publicly in the form of Rashmi Sinha
PowerPoint, PDF, word etc. The uploaded slide files can be viewed on the site
itself or can be linked to the other sites.
24 2007 Tumbler A microblogging and social networking website that permits users to post David Karp
content like multimedia etc. to a short blog. Users can make their blogs private
and can also follow blogs of others.

BizSugar A social networking platform for small businessman, entrepreneurs and John Holsen
managers that permits users to share content like articles, videos, blog posts,
podcast and also permit users to view and vote on submissions done by other
members.
25 2009 WhatsApp A cross-platform immediate messaging system that uses Internet to share texts, Brian Acton and Jan
images, documents, audio and video messages among users who have installed Koum
the app on their devices like mobiles, PCs and tablets
Pinterest A social network that permits users to visually share, getting information about Ben Silbermann,
their interests by posting images or videos to their own or others' boards and Evan Sharp and Paul
surfing what other users have pinned. Sciarra

26 2010 Instagram A photo and video-sharing social networking service. Kevin Systrom and
Mike Krieger
Viber A Voice over IP (VoIP) and immediate messaging app that permits sending and Talmon Marco and
receiving of images, audio and video through mobile devices between users. Igor Magazinnik
27 2014 Periscope A live video streaming mobile app that permits sharing and experiencing live Joe Bernstein and
video streams direct from tablet or smartphone. KayvonBeykpour
28 2015 Minds A federated social networking service having open source and it integrate the Bill Ottman, John
blockchainto provide the community with ERC-20 tokens as rewards for Ottman, Mark
several contributions to the network. Tokens can be used by users for several Harding
purposes like endorsing their content or to crowdfundand tip other users for
exchange of exclusive content and services by subscribing to them monthly.
Gab.ai A social media website that permits its users to read and write English-language Andrew Torba
multimedia messages of up to 3,000 characters, called "gabs".
29 2016 Mastodon An online self-hosted social media and social networking service that permits Eugen Rochko
anyone to host their own server node in the network, and its various separately
operated user bases are federated across many different sites (called
"instances").
Source: Table created by authors of this paper.

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Note: The list of social media is very comprehensive. In the above table only selective, important developments have been cap tured.

5. Conclusion
As evident from the developments that took place in social media over past years, we can say that the trend of these developments is likely to grow at a
exponential pace in the future also. Newer types of social networking sites are connecting different types of individuals for different purposes. The usage
of social media has seen immense growth in terms of users across the world including developed as well as developing countrie s. Usage of social
networking sites has grown immensely over past decade. About 70% adults in America used minimum one SNS in 2017 (Pew Research Center, 2017). As
estimated average person, in his or her lifetime, spends five years and four months on accessing social networking sites (Campbell, 2017). Smith (2017)
observed that with more and more people joining internet, the number of Facebook users is also on rise. The usage rate is significantly increasi ng in
countries like India and Indonesia; with massive populations and rapidly expanding internet penetration rates, these countries provide the platform of new
Facebook users in the future. Livemint (2018) also reported that India has become highest audience country of Facebook, the p opular social media
platform and has crossed 241 million mark as compared to US where the number of active users of Facebook is 240 million. Thus, entire world now, has
starting using some or the other form of social media; businesses are now largely dependent on social media for promotion of their products; consumers
seek information from social media; different types social media cater to specific needs of different individuals and groups. As more and more people are
becoming dependent on social media for different purposes, in the future also there is likelihood of emergence of even more sophisticated form of social
media which will cover the masses across the world. Based on the available literature and trends, we can conclude that the ti mes to come will witness
even more developments in the field of social media which will take communication technology by stride. Studying history of social media can help us
better understand just how much, and how quickly, the world around us is changing.

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