Social Media: How Were They Formed?

Social Media: How Were They Formed?

Welcome back my fellow bloggers!  This week’s topic will focus on the formation of Social Media sites and their impact whether good or bad.  Let’s begin our discussion with defining what social media is.  According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, the word social is “of or relating to human society, the interaction of the individual and the group, or the welfare of human beings as members of society.  The word media means a medium of cultivation, conveyance, or expression.  Media is also a plural form of medium and a medium is a particular form or system of communication.”  Communication and interaction with others are very vital to us as a community.   To sum it up, social media refers to the interaction among people in which they create, share and/or exchange information and ideas in virtual communities and networks.  The systems depend on mobile and web-based technologies to create large interactive platforms through which individuals and communities share, converse, and modify user-generated content.  Social media gives you the ability to influence and or communicate whether positive or negative, whether good or bad, whether deserving or not deserving.

Let’s take a moment to examine the history of some of the most popular social media sites. 

Facebook

Facebook was founded in 2004 and is one of the top social media networks around.  It was initially formed for a group of students at Harvard University but later the website was opened up to anyone over the age of 13.  Prior to using the site the user must register and create a profile.  Facebook currently has over one billion active users.  

Twitter

Twitter is another on-line social networking service that allows users to send “tweets” which are just like text messages.  You also have to be registered for this site in order to read and post tweets.  It was created in March of 2006 and currently has 500 million registered users. 

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is more of a professional networking tool for those people in professional occupations.  It was launched in 2003 and has 259 million users.  It has been noted as one of the most successful startup companies through cultural impact and growth.

Pinterest

Pinterest is used for discovering new things and is utilized to collect ideas for different projects and other stuff that you love or your interest.  This site is also used to build, cook, organize and share the things you love.  You can also plan trips and projects, organize events or save articles and recipes.

Google Plus

Google Plus is the second-largest social networking site in the world after Facebook.  As a matter of fact, Google Plus is a lot like Facebook but with many more features.  It was reported as having 540 million monthly active users.

Tumblr

Tumblr has blogging capabilities and is also a social networking site founded and owned by Yahoo.  The service allows users to post multimedia and other content to a “short-form” blog. Much of the website's features are accessed from the dashboard interface, this is mostly where the option to post content and posts of other followed blogs will appear.  Tumblr was reported as having over 170.2 million blogs.

Instagram

Instagram is an online photo-sharing, video-sharing and social network service that enables its users to take pictures and videos, apply digital filters to them, and share them on a variety of social networking services. Users are also able to record and share short videos lasting for up to 15 seconds.  Instagram was launched in October 2010. The service rapidly gained popularity, with over 100 million active users during 2012.

Flickr

Flickr is another image hosting and video hosting website, In addition to being a popular website for users to share and embed personal photographs, the service is widely used by photo researchers and by bloggers to host images that they embed in blogs and other social media.

VK

VK is the second biggest social network service in Europe after Facebook, of course.  It is available in several languages, but particularly popular among Russian-speaking users around the world.  VK allows users to message contacts publicly or privately, create groups, public pages and events, share and tag images, audio and video, and play browser-based games. As of January 2014^[update], VK had at least 239 million accounts.

Myspace

Myspace is a social networking service with a strong music emphasis owned by Specific Media LLC and pop music singer and actor Justin Timberlake. Myspace was launched in August 2003 and as of June 2013^[update], Myspace was ranked 303 by total web traffic, and 223 in the United States.

Tagged

Tagged is a social discovery website founded in 2004. It allows members to browse the profiles of other members, play games and share tags and virtual gifts. Tagged is reported to have 100 million members.

Ask.fm

Ask.fm is a Latvia-based social networking website where users can ask other users questions, with the option of anonymity. The site was launched on June 16, 2010. Founded as a rival to Spring.me.  It has since overtaken it in terms of worldwide traffic generated. Ask.fm was created in June 2010. The service rapidly gained worldwide popularity, with 80 million registered users in 2013.  Ask.fm is now one of the 200 most visited websites in the world.

The presence of Social Media is certainly very popular these days and can be a rich and insightful boost to your social media marketing plans and goals.  It has the power to influence and can either be a positive impact or negative impact on you or your organization.  Not all social media is driven by the same purpose, most of these sites are very different but all have the power to influence the reader with whatever niche it aims to.