Looking Back On How Social Media Started
One of the essential components of human civilization is communication. The Bible said that God communicated with the first man and woman. Even before the prehistoric period, it was said that there was only one language. But people were separated after they spoke different languages and were not able to understand each other. We want to point out that communication has great significance to our lives, and one of them is in business and marketing.
Communication, or interaction, was intensified after the invention of the telephone, the radio, and television. And now that we are in the present time, connecting turns out to be straightforward and achievable with the help of the Internet and modern technology. As the Internet continues to develop, various social media platforms were conceived. As of April 2021, the top three most popular social media platforms are Facebook, YouTube, and WhatsApp. They became more in demand during this COVID-19 pandemic because they are more usable and helpful for business and personal communications. These top three platforms have also been a part of outsourcing customer service and outsourcing influencer marketing.
In outsourcing customer service, social media platforms help the brand and the customers to stay connected. Aside from phone calls, which is the primary means of communication between brands and consumers, millennial customers and younger ones prefer to use social media channels like Facebook to interact with the brand. Meanwhile, outsourcing influencer marketing is a cost-effective way to promote brands to the target audience. By using social media influencers, it helps brands to reach people who are aligned to the products and are sure buyers. Now that the influence of social media is powerful, several influencers were born, and they successfully built trust, credibility, and a good reputation. Because of this, brands are taking advantage of the phenomenal success of influencers for product promotion.
But do you want to know the first social media platforms that became popular before Facebook and others? They are the Six Degrees and Friendster.
Six Degrees. It is recognized as the “first online social media” site and named after the “six degrees of separation” theory. It is the first social network that allowed people to sign up via their email address, create individual profiles, and add friends to their network, like what we do now on Facebook. Six Degrees officially began in 1997 and lasted until 2001. The number of users reached as high as 3.5 million.
Friendster. It was created in 2002. Like Six Degrees, it allowed users to sign up through their email addresses and make friends. It is considered as part of a personal network. Friendster users could also share videos, photos, and messages with other users. And like Facebook, they were also able to write comments on other people’s profiles, as long as they were part of each other’s network. After a few months of its launching, Friendster accumulated over 3 million users. And the numbers continued to grow, eventually reaching over one hundred million.
But the popularity of Friendster declined when Facebook was born in 2004. In 2011, Friendster was renamed as a social gaming site and focused mainly on the gaming community. But it failed and stopped all of its services in 2015. Friendster finally bid goodbye on January 1, 2019. The majority of Facebook users who belonged in Generations X and Y were once to be Friendster users.
It is not surprising if there would be more social media platforms soon. They make our lives easier, more comfortable, and accessible. Through these channels, the interaction between brands and customers remains strong and constant.
