The word combination “social network” was born in 1954 and had nothing in common with the Internet.
The person who invented the term was James Barnes: “social network” is a social structure, which includes individuals or groups linked to the same type of activity, common interests, friendship or relationships. So it is a kind of structure of familiar people, divided into different groups, where each person forms a group of classmates, colleagues or friends around him.
Year after year, this scientific concept progressed and gained a lot of popularity. The first growth was observed in North America and Eastern Europe. During the process of development of society we reached the age of information and communication, where social networks became very popular.
The first computer social network appeared in 1971 and was used by the military in the ARPA Net network.
1988 was a year of IRC (Internet Relay Chat), which provided the opportunity to speak online.
The main event was an internet appearance, which Tim Berners-Lee made public in 1991.
There was a network called slassmates.com launched in 1995. It was very popular and became a beginning year of the development process of social networks on the Internet. But still, classmates.com is
one of the most popular social networks with almost 50 million users.
In 2004 facebook.com appeared and became very popular all over the world immediately. The concept of this network was a little different but it made a revolution in the world of social networks. It has over 700 million users now.
In 2008 the discount service called Groupon appeared, which is not a real social network, but uses similar principles as social networks and invites people to be part of the Groupon community.
Classification
Now there are many different types of social media, so let’s take a look at some of them.
By type:
- Clasmates.com (personal communication)
- Linkedln (business communication)
- Youtube video)
- Last.fm (audio)
- Flickr (photos)
- Groupon (shopping)
- Reddit (news)
- Forsquare (geolocation)
- Tumblr (blogs)
- Answers.com (answers and questions)
- Delicious (bookmarks)
- Second Life (virtual worlds)
- Slashdot (themed)
By availability:
- Facebook (open)
- PlayboyU (private)
- VK (mixed)
By region:
- Hi5 (worldwide)
- Qzone (country)
- InterNations (worldwide)
The first classification is the most interesting and has many different content for different groups of people and different goals. So each person has the opportunity to find a niche and find almost all existing topics. The most popular networks continue to grow.
The second type of classification shows availability. There are three different types of current classification: open, private, and mixed. Each network was created for a purpose and some of the networks were not made public. And just because of their business model, these networks are closed. But most of the networks are still public and can be used by anyone from any social group. That is not to the liking of many people due to its informative advertising. Mixed-type social networks are generally not as popular as public networks, because users simply do not like to cross any barriers and prefer to abstain from such networks.
And the last type shows us the largest networks in the world that made a kind of union between people from different countries regardless of their culture and skin color. Its clones later appeared in different countries and regions. And now we can see many different types of networks that are linked to a city, region or even corporation and political organization. That means that regardless of who you are and where you are, you can always be part of any kind of virtual community.