Main sources:;xNLx;http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/social-media-history_b18776;xNLx; http://www.onlineschools.org/blog/history-of-social-networking/
In January 1994, two electrical engineering graduate students at Stanford create a website called "Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web." A powerful search engine, it quickly gains popularity and is renamed "Yahoo!'
The website TheGlobe.com launches as one of the first online social networks. It allows registered users to post personal information and connect with other users who share similar interests. The company is founded by two Cornell University students and in 1998 goes public. The initial IPO is huge, but the stock price crashes a year later. The site is shut down in 2008.
Google starts as a research project conducted by two Stanford Ph.D. students named Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Like Yahoo! it is a powerful way to search millions of websites on the internet.
America Online (AOL) releases Instant Messenger (AIM), the first large-scale online instant messaging service. It allows users to create personal profiles and chat with "buddies" in real-time. Users can also post "away messages," a predecessor of Facebook status updates and Tweets.
OpenDiary.com allows users to publicly share journal entries and comment on other peoples' posts. The site was an early pioneer of the "blogging" format, inspiring many subsequent sites.
The Dotcom bubble bursts after hundreds of new companies rapidly form, take in huge investments, and then dramatically underperform. Many start-ups go bust. Lots of young entrepenuers who have recently become instantly rich, lose it all.. The once-generous flow of investment money dries up, and some speculate the death of the industry.
Friendster is one of the first social networks to emerge in the post-bubble internet era. A predecessor of Facebook, it allows users to form networks and share personal data about themselves. TIME Magazine calls it one of the best inventions of 2003.
Reid Hoffman, an Oxford-trained philosopher, launches LinkedIn, a professional social network for professional networking. While Friendster quickly plummeted in popularity, LinkedIn has remained a very popular and profitable professional resource.
Two musicians create MySpace. A competitor to Friendster, it allows individual users and bands to customize page designs, post ads, and share music. It becomes especially popular as a promotional site for musicians.
While still an undergrad at Harvard, Mark Zuckerberg launches "theFacebook," a college-specific social network. The site is initially just for Harvard students but quickly expands to other colleges throughout the country before becoming available to everyone. The site now has over 800 million active users.
A Vancouver-based company creates Flickr, a photo-sharing platform that allows users to easily upload and post photos that can be viewed publicly and among selected networks of other users. A year later, the company is acquired by Yahoo! for about $35 million.
Three recent college graduates create YouTube, an online video sharing platform. The first video is a 19-second clip of one of them standing in front of elephants at the San Diego Zoo. The site rapidly gains popularity, and in just over a year it's acquired by Google for $1.65 billion in stock options. Currently, it's one of the most visited sites on the internet.
A team of engineers launch an early version of Twitter (first called "Twttr") for their network of friends that allows users to broadcast updates via text message. The team soon creates a web-based platform that anyone can sign up for. Users create messages of up to 140 characters that can be viewed by their "followers." Within a few years Twitter becomes popular among both journalists and social movement organizers as a platform for quickly broadcasting breaking news and information.
Apple launches the iPhone, the first smartphone of its kind, it popularizes the concept of mobile apps and revolutionizes social media. Users no longer need to be at their computers to engage in networks. They can instead interact anywhere and anytime. Crowds camp out for days in front of Apple stores in anticipation of the release.
Facebook introduces the "Like" feature to the site, which increases user activity and greatly expands the amount of data Facebook can collect.
As anti-government protests erupt throughout the Middle East, protestors use Facebook, Twitter, and other social media applications for their organizing efforts.
The Pope opens a Twitter account and sends his first Tweet via an iPad.
After rejecting purchase offers for over 7 years, Facebook decides to go public and sell stock in its company (with an Initial Public Offering). The company is estimated to be worth up to $100 billion. It is the biggest technology IPO in history, and the sixth largest of any type of company.
We'd love to hear from you. Please send questions or feedback to the below email addresses.
Before contacting us, you may wish to visit our FAQs page which has lots of useful info on Tiki-Toki.
We can be contacted by email at: hello@tiki-toki.com.
You can also follow us on twitter at twitter.com/tiki_toki.
If you are having any problems with Tiki-Toki, please contact us as at: help@tiki-toki.com
Close