Blog 5 - The History of Social Media

            Social media has become second nature in our society today. It links billions of people together on a global scale in ways that was never thought possible. It is hard to believe that this phenomenon is not done growing and that we are on the verge of experiencing a social communication breakthrough. In an article written in the American Historical Review, Rozenzweig quotes the publisher of Wired magazine’s, Louis Rossetto, belief that the breakthroughs in social media have already, and will continue to, bring about “social changes so profound their only parallel is probably the discovery of fire.” This comparison can be viewed as a profound overstatement when you take into account that prior to 1988, the Times only referenced the internet one time, in a short aside article, that had very little significant reference (Rozenzweig). All things must have their beginning. In order to understand the history of social media as we know it today, we must first understand how the internet and the World Wide Web began and transformed life as we know it forever.

            During the 1950’s and 1960’s, many of the world’s nations were at war with each other. It is argued that during this time period the Internet was created out of the need to have a communications network in place that would be capable of surviving a nuclear attack. The Rand Corporation, a think tank used for research and development, was tasked by the United States government to create this new communication utility. Rand partnered with the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) and together attempted to build this so called communication network. They created “the essence of the internet” through a multitude of cables, radio, and satellite communications (Ryan). At first, these communication lines were largely used for military and educational purposes. But in the late 1950’s, the idea of online networking as a social, public phenomenon began. Young adults began to engage in an activity known as phreaking, which is the art of hacking into telecommunications systems for the purpose of making a free phone call. This group of individuals grew in numbers and they began communication with one another to share their common interest of hacking the systems. This led to the public use of the Internet as a means of communication with each other (Ryan). The Internet was used largely by only those technologically savvy enough to manipulate it. It would need a user-friendly face-lift through the adoption of the World Wide Web.

            Over one-hundred and thirty years ago, Alexander Graham Bell received the patent for the telephone. Obviously this had a drastic impact on how we, as a society, are connected today. It took 74 years before there were over 50 million subscribers using the telephone to be connected. Radio subsequently took 38 years to reach the same figures after it went public followed by the computer; taking 16 years for it to reach the same amount of people.  As the technology became more available and more advanced, the time it took to connect mass amounts of people decreased exponentially. The World Wide Web, after its inception in 1993, would require a time of only four years to reach over 50 million users (1 Setting). The World Wide Web was created by the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, by a scientist in 1989. It was originally created to establish lines of communication for scientists at many different institutions across the globe. In 1993, CERN donated the technology to the world allowing mass public use (CERN). This led to the commercialization of the World Wide Web.

            Though the concept of the World Wide Web as a navigations system was adopted from CERN in 1993, private commercialization of the Internet and World Wide Web was taking place years prior to that. In 1991, the United States began to allow commercial users to access the Internet. This gave way to the concept of the modern day Internet Service Provider, or ISP. Users could pay a fee to a commercial provider and in return were granted access to the Internet. At first, users of one company could only connect to users who used that same company. But once CERN released their user-friendly browser, the World Wide Web, it became possible for users to connect to anyone on the Internet. In 2001, it was estimated that 18% of the total phone calls made within the United States were for the purpose of establishing connection to the Internet. People were buying computers not for the purpose of computing, but for the purpose of connecting to the web (1 Setting). Commercialization began to boom as web giants Google and Yahoo began to dominate the online market. It was now possible for mass amounts of people to be connected to one another and transmit information faster than we could have ever thought possible. Previously, media was confined to “relatively local viewing or listening” and it became “user-shared” and accessible “world-wide” (Ryan). The concept of user-shared information was the focal point of what has become the most socially connected society in our history. The idea of a user driven web is what gave rise to the social media behemoths Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

            According to Dr. Anthony Curtis, Mass Communication Dept., University of North Carolina at Pembroke, blogging began in 1997 and the Web had over one million web sites. User of AOL could instantly chat and the idea of social connectivity began to flourish through online accounts and profiles. In 2000, over seventy million computers were said to be connected to the Internet. In 2002, the social networking website, Friendster, was launched and grew to 3 million members in just three months. A year later, Myspace.com was launched as a clone of Friendster and quickly rose in popularity. At this time in 2003, there were over 3 billion Web pages. In 2004, social media websites were growing in popularity and many new websites, including Facebook, were established. By 2005, there were over 8 billion web pages and hundreds of millions of Web users (Curtis). In 2009, Facebook was ranked as the most used social network worldwide with over 200 million users. Just one year later in 2010, Facebook’s users doubled to 400 million and it was estimated that almost 30 percent of the earth’s population used the internet. By 2011, social media was accessible from virtually anywhere and had become “an integral part of our lives” with “over 550 million people on Facebook, over 65 million Tweets sent through Twitter…, and over 2 billion video views every day on YouTube (Curtis).” It is estimated that by 2015, in just three years, over 60% of the Earth’s population, approximately 4 billion people, would use the internet (Curtis).

            Without a doubt, the implications of an entire world being socially connected are unknown. There is no telling what the consequences, for better or worse, would be. In a matter of years, the number of people online has grown exponentially and is continuing to increase at unprecedented intervals. By examining the history of this social phenomenon, it is an understatement to say that society was prepared. We will continue to see changes on a global scale of how we continue to connect to one another and remaining connected will, undoubtedly, change the aspects of our everyday lives. 

Works Cited

"1 Setting The Scene--The Internet, The World Wide Web And Cyberspace." Hume Papers On Public Policy 7.4 (1999): 1. Academic Search Premier. Web. 14 Nov. 2012.

"CERN - How the web began." CERN - the European Organization for Nuclear Research. European Organization for Nuclear Research, n.d. Web. 14 Nov. 2012. <http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/About/WebStory-en.html>.

Curtis, Anthony . "The Brief History of Social Media." The University of North Carolina at Pembroke. Mass Communications Department. Web. 14 Nov. 2012. <http://www.uncp.edu/home/acurtis/NewMedia/SocialMedia/SocialMediaHistory.html>.

Rosenzweig, Roy. "Review Essay: Wizards, Bureaucrats, Warriors, And Hackers: Writing The History Of The Internet." American Historical Review 103.5 (1998): 1530. Academic Search Premier. Web. 14 Nov. 2012.

Ryan, J. "A History Of The Internet And The Digital Future." World Future Review 4.1 (2012): 105-108. Academic Search Premier. Web. 14 Nov. 2012.