some years ago, generated a before and after in the different civilizations, above all because it opened the way to a new way of communication between users who do not necessarily need to be in the same room. For example, with email, web pages or forums. The interaction between people began to gain, little by little, more and more strength, eliminating -among other things- a large number of cultural or language borders.
And, how could it be otherwise, within the previous scenario, social networks also emerged, whose success lies fundamentally in the possibility that They offer users to communicate with others, in a totally immediate way, through virtual spacesno matter where on the planet they are.
History of social networks: index
The history of social networks: how and when they were born
the beginnings
To begin we must, back in 1947, when the Cold War he took his first steps, facing citizens from end to end of the world; some Westerners and capitalists (led by the United States), and others Eastern and Communists (led by, then, the Soviet Union).
A real battle for power that led to numerous technological advances. Among them, the US created the Advanced Research Projects Agency (HARP), which -a decade later- laid the pillars of what would be known as the Internet, since its ARPANET network allowed the exchange of information between institutions.
Thanks to this, over time, users from different parts of the world began to be in contact thanks to electronic (being the first) or (Free Online Library), in 1971. A few years later, in 1991, The global Internet network became public, with the World Wide Web (what we commonly know as “www”), and thus the Internet emerged.
What was the first social network? Six Degrees (1997)
But what happened back then? That, despite all these advances, there was still no element, tool or application that allowed users to socialize with each other, beyond the exchange of emails or online chat programs,
This changed in 1997, when it was created SixDegreeswhich can be considered as the world’s first social network; a network that allowed you to locate other members of the network and create lists of friends, and that was based on the theory of the six degrees of separation, which states that it is possible to connect with any other person in the world in just 6 steps.
as explained Andrew Weinrich, its creator, the day of its launch: “The challenge is to build a community, the challenge is to light a flame. This is a service that you can use to make your life more efficient. But, like buying an address book, if you don’t add names to it, it’s useless.”
The application, basically a network that linked acquaintances with “acquaintances of acquaintances”, can be considered a failed network in commercial terms, but it is undeniable that it laid the foundations of what we know today as Social Networks. The app closed in 2001.
The arrival of Friendster, MySpace and LinkedIn (2002/2003)
In 2001, as we said, SixDegrees disappeared, but it only took a few more months for the then lucky digital users to start enjoying , as friendsterwhich was created in 2002 as a social network for video game lovers, or my space Y LinkedIn, which appeared in 2003, being considered much more professional and business-oriented networks. , many of which disappeared… although not all.
Especially LinkedIn, whose impact on the business world was immediate, reaching, in 2008, more than 25 million registered users, extending to companies in 150 different sectors. Today, it has more than 600 million registered users.
The appearance of the social network par excellence: Facebook (2004)
And, how could it be otherwise, in 2004, a young university student from Harvard University put the icing on the cake, and created the most important social network in the world today: Facebook. That young student -who today we could easily classify as “nerd”-, is known as Mark.
The story of Zuckerberg and how he created Facebook is exciting: Zuckerberg created, back then, a portal called face mash whose purpose was none other than to be able to connect Harvard students with each other, to have -thus- a virtual place to share opinions about who the people were more and less attractive of the University; something that reached the Directorate of the same, generating the expulsion of the student.
However, his computer skills were seen so clearly with that application, that it took little time to evolve and grow to what it is today; a social network that already has more than 2.5 billion active users per month.
YouTube: the audiovisual phenomenon (2005)
Only a year later, in 2005, a new revolution arose, which today remains one of the most important social networks: Youtube. A network created by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawn Karim in San Bruno, California. According to legend, the idea of YouTube arose from the difficulties that the 3 young people found to share a series of videos with their friends, while they were at a party in San Francisco.
On April 23, 2005, the first video was uploaded to the network: «me at the zoo“, which we show you below:
The bombing of this network was such that users from all over the world quickly began to upload videos of all kinds to the network, slightly losing its original idea. But nonetheless, the traffic skyrocketed even more when users started placing YouTube links on your MySpace pages. Today, the network has about 2 billion active users per month.
The beginning of messages in 140 characters: Twitter (2006)
In 2006 it emerged, in San Francisco and from the hand of the microblogging social network: Twitterwhich was initially called twttr, to later evolve to the current name. It was, without a doubt, the communication revolution. The “short burst of inconsequential information“, or the trill of a birdwhich, in English, is said tweet.
Today, the impact of this network is such that even the media, such as television, radio and digital news media, dedicate entire spaces to talking about the impact that a tweet, trend or special mention has had on a current news item. And, despite the fact that it has some detractors, the truth is that many attribute its success to the simplicity of its use; the same use as in its origin: that of a limited number of characters that allow its users to communicate with each other. Nowadays, the network has about 340 million active users per month.
WhatsApp (2009)
The one that today we can consider as the most famous instant messaging app emerged in 2009, and was created by the Ukrainian Jan Kuum. It was originally created with the utility of being an intelligent agenda -hence it is linked to the contact agenda of our mobile terminal-, allowing the user to see what each person was doing at each moment, in order to know whether or not she could initiate a conversation with him. Hence its name: WhatsApp («What’s up?”, “What’s up?”)
Today, exceeds 2 billion usersbeing above applications such as FacebookMessenger either Telegram. In 2014, it was bought by Mark Zuckerberg -the creator of Facebook- for nothing more and nothing less than 19,000 million dollars.
Instagram: The Largest Photography Network (2010)
In 2010, Instagram reached the market, quickly positioning itself as the most photographic social network par excellence, with a success greater than other options like Flickr. Instagram was created by Kevin Systrom and Mike Kriegerand the particularity with which it had in its beginnings (which remains today) is that it treated its images and photographs in a square shape, in honor of the Kodak Instamatic as well as Polaroid cameras, contrasting with the aspect ratio more vertical than today have most of the cameras of mobile terminals.
In addition, it was the pioneer network, along with Twitter, in the popularization of hashtag, back in January 2011, seeking to make it easier for users to discover the photographs that other users shared on the same subject, and that could not be viewed in any other way.
Instagram achieved great popularity in its first months of life, reaching more than 100 million active users in April 2012 (only two years later), and more than 300 in 2014. Nowadays, it is still growing more and more –hovering around 1 billion active users-, especially since it is a social network focused on the new generations, who are so guilty of being 24/7 showing their contacts what they are doing, in the form of photographs placed on their feed or in their Stories (a format that is defined by making content public that disappears after 24 hours, in which Snapchat was a pioneer, and, some time later, it came to Instagram and Facebook).
Precisely, this measure, that of launching their own stories, was key in the fate of Snapchat, the social network that at the time was on everyone’s lips as the fastest growing worldwide, and that ended up languishing in much of the world, overshadowed by the power of Instagram.
Pinterest and Google+ (2010/2011)
From then on, every year new social networks emerged with different functionalities or aimed at different groups. pinterest, for example, a social network that collects images -above all, of inspiration- that allows users to store them on boards and provide them with «pins», was created in 2010 and, 9 months after its launch, it already had 10,000 users. The network has more than 300 million active users per month.
For its part, it was the great failed attempt of the online giant: emerged in 2011, it was a social network owned by Google, which reached 10 million users just two weeks after its launch. After 3 weeks of operation, it was already around 20 million. A network that made great efforts to challenge others like Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Vimeo either Tumblrbut which -unfortunately- closed its doors in April of this year.
Twitch, the reference platform for gamers (2011)
It arrived in the social media sector in 2011, and from the beginning it set a trend due to its focus on the growing gaming market. justin khan, Emmett Shear, Michael Seibel Y Kyle Vogtits creators, had previously experimented with a live video platform, Justin.tv (2007). This, in principle, was a kind of reality show about Kan’s life, where he documented his daily routine with a camera that he wore in his cap. However, since it did not have such an audience, its creators decided to open it to the public in October of the same year, arousing great interest in the internet community.
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