2. What is Social Media
“A broad term referring to the wide swath of content
creation and consumption that is enabled by the many-
to-many distributed infrastructure of the Internet.”
Journalism.co.uk
www.journalism.co.uk
3. Where Did it All Start?
The true origin of social media is very difficult to
determine.
Many people believe the beginning of social media
was the use of bulletin boards in the late 1970’s and
early 1980’s.
Ward Christensen was the developer of the first
public bulletin board; this board went live on
February 16, 1978.
It is reported that this bulletin board connected
253,301 people before being retired.
BBSDAYS.com
4. When Did it Become Mainstream?
This bulletin board laid the
foundations for what was to
become known as the World
Wide Web.
In 1990 the first web browser
was released, this browser
was known as
WorldWideWeb.
Now that a client existed that
allowed regular people
browse the internet, the
content began to flow rapidly.
www.about.com
5. When Did it Take Off.
During the 1990’s many new websites began to
emerge which focused on user communities and
user generated content.
The most notable of what was Geocities.
Began in 1995
Allowed users to have a person space on the web.
Huge success and went on to be acquired by Yahoo!
for $3.57 billion in 1998.
After this hundreds of websites began to emerge
(LiveJournal, Myspace, HI5, HubCulture ….)
WebHostingNow.com
6. Social Media Today : In Numbers
The number of items
4 Billion shared on Facebook per
day.
Facebook’s user count. *
812 Million
The % population of the
11% world with a Facebook
account.
Youtube page views each
92 Billion month.
Video uploaded to Youtube
35 Hours per minute.
7. Conclusion
Social media growing rapidly.
Becoming more integrated into our lives.
Evolving the way people communicate.
9. References
BBSDAYS.com. (n.d.). Retrieved December 1st, 2011, from BBS
Days: http://bbsdays.com/people/ward_christensen/
Guardian.co.uk. (n.d.). Guardian. Retrieved from Guardian.co.uk:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/24/syria-crackdown-
shooting
Hubspot.com. (2011). 100 Awesome Marketing Stats, Charts and
Graphs. Retrieved December 6th, 2011, from Hubspot.com:
http://www.hubspot.com/download-100-awesome-marketing-stats-
charts-and-graphs/
Living Internet. (n.d.). History of The Web Browser. Retrieved
December 1st, 2011, from LivingInternet.com:
http://www.livinginternet.com/w/wi_browse.htm
Web Hosting Now. (n.d.). Web Hosting Now. Retrieved Decemeber
1st, 2011, from www.webhostingshow.com:
http://www.webhostingshow.com/2009/05/06/a-lesson-in-geocities-
history/
