History of Social Media: From 1971 Email to Facebook

The History of Social Media and Its Impact on Modern Business

The history of social media starts with the first email in 1971 and runs through GeoCities, Friendster and Facebook to today's business marketing.

By Socialia Newsroom

Published April 27, 2017, 3:27 PM WIB Updated May 12, 2017 2 min read

The history of social media actually begins in 1978, long before Google or Facebook existed. That year, the bulletin board system appeared, letting people upload and download information and communicate by electronic mail. These early networks ran over modems and telephone lines. Even before the bulletin board system, though, social media had taken its first step: in 1971, researchers at ARPA (the Advanced Research Project Agency) sent the first electronic mail.

Years later, the history of social media entered a phase in which websites began to appear. It started with GeoCities in 1995, a milestone for social media and for the websites that followed. The same year brought the social networking site Classmates.com, though it offered few of the features of a real social network. Social media moved forward again with the arrival of SixDegrees.com, which took Classmates.com's place.

In 1999, Blogger arrived, the personal blogging site that is still famous today. It was a step forward in the development of social media history, because it gave users a new feature: they could create their own web pages. In 2002, Friendster launched and became the most popular social networking site of its day. From there, the history of social media entered a new era with far more developed social networking features.

With LinkedIn's arrival in 2003, the role of social media grew even wider. MySpace appeared the same year, and it was very user-friendly for its time. Then, in 2004, came the site that is still a social media giant today: Facebook. Facebook has recorded the most users of any platform in the history of social media.

After Facebook, social media history continued with Twitter in 2006 and Google+ in 2011. Today, social media is used for more than exchanging information. It has become a business in its own right, often called social media marketing or social media optimization. Entrepreneurs from small and large businesses alike use the opportunity to grow their companies widely.