History of Social Networking

Initially, the term “social network” did not refer to the Internet at all, and meant a group of people with a defined relationship, either two-way or one-way. The phrase came to sociologist James Barnes in 1954.

The emergence of the World Wide Web in 1969 led to the development of the social networks to which we are now accustomed. More information you will find on a site follower18.com, a lot of useful and interesting information.

The first social networks

The ancestor of modern social networks using computer devices is considered to be a network created in 1971 for interaction between the military.

The invention of ‘IRC’ in 1988 by a Finnish scientist marked the beginning of real-time communication.

But social networking reached its peak in 1995, when American Randy Conrads launched Classmates.com, a site for finding friends from various educational institutions. Today, it has over 50 million registered users. The Russian version of the project is Odnoklassniki, which has 290 million people.

The most popular social networks

Facebook Inc. and its eponymous website originated in 2004 as a team effort among Harvard students. They were founded by four friends. Until September 2006, registration was only available within the US. Then it was opened for all Internet users over 16 years old, which allowed the social network to become a leader in terms of traffic, reaching around 2 million users per month.

October 2006 was the date on which Pavel Durov created VKontakte. The resource was created for communication between students and graduates of national universities, but it quickly went beyond the limits of its designation and earned a high ranking in the ranking of the most popular websites in the world. This is evidenced by the number of registered users surpassing the 410 million mark.

March 2006 was a historic milestone for Twitter, positioned as a medium for the efficient exchange of information among employees of the company with the same name. In mid-July, Twitter was made available to all adult users of the internet. Today it has over 300 million followers.

In October 2010, the App Store offered Burbn, invented by Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom, a free app for sharing videos and photos. The project was later renamed Instagram, which everyone knows. Here you could make appointments, check in and post photos. Soon the creators noticed a huge rush to post photos and removed unclaimed features. The app now boasts 200 million active subscribers and more than 16 billion uploaded videos and photos.