The first platforms for social media

Communication is one of the most integral parts of human civilization. God had communicated with the first man and woman. The Bible says that during the Babylonian period, God built the Tower of Babel to separate people after speaking different languages ​​and not understanding each other. It just means that communication is very important to people.

Communication was possibly achieved after the invention of the telephone, radio, and television. Fast forward to the twenty-first century, communication becomes simpler and more accessible after the advent of the Internet. This is followed by the existence of what we have now called social media platforms. Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are the three most popular social media platforms in the last year until 2021. They have become important when the pandemic that COVID-19 brought here all over the world. These social media platforms have helped a lot so that business and personal communication will not be hampered. In addition, they have been a part of online customer service as many companies rely on outsourcing of various business functions, such as outsourcing influencer marketing and virtual help.

But did you know that before the advent of Facebook and other social media channels, there were first social media sites? They are Six Degrees and Friendster.

Six Degrees erkänns som den “första sociala mediasidan” och har fått sitt namn efter teorin om “sex grader av separation”. Denna teori berättar att alla i världen är anslutna till alla andra genom högst sex grader av separation.

Six Degrees is considered the first social network and allowed people to register with their email address, create individual profiles and add friends to their network. Very similar to what we do on Facebook. It was 1997 when Six Degrees officially started and it lasted until 2001. The number of users reached as high as 3.5 million. Youthstream Media Networks acquired Six Degrees in 1999 for $ 125 million but ceased operations a year later.

Friendster – 2002 created a social media site called Friendster. Like Six Degrees, it allowed users to sign up via their email address and make friends. It is considered part of a personal network. Friendster users can also share videos, photos, and messages with other users. Like Facebook, they could also post comments on other people’s profiles, as long as they were part of each other’s personal networks.

Friendster gathered over 3 million users after a few months of launch. And the number of users continued to grow and eventually reached over one hundred million. But Friendster’s popularity declined when Facebook was born in 2004. In 2011, Friendster has renamed a social gaming site and focused primarily on the gaming community. It kept up to date with competing sites like Google, Yahoo! And Facebook. But it completely failed and stopped all its services in 2015. Friendster finally said goodbye on January 1, 2019. The majority of Facebook users who belonged to Generations X and Y would once be Friendster users.

Outsourcing of influencer marketing, one of the areas in the BPO industry, utilizes the social media platforms. They use influencers who have solid social media to achieve product awareness and acquire more potential customers at a very low cost.

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