Social Media
MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and Instagram
MySpace
- Was one of the first social media websites to gain popularity
- A social media website with profiles, "friends", blogs, photos, videos and music
- Started in August, 2003 by Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson
- Headquarters are in Beverly Hills, California
- The biggest social network website from 2005-2008
- Mark Zuckerberg, the creator of Facebook, offered to buy MySpace in 2005, but was rejected
- Beat out Google in 2006 for the most visited website
- Sadly, in August of 2008, Facebook beat MySpace for the biggest social media website
- Has slowly decline ever since that point
- Some thought that MySpace declined due to not updating their website layout to what consumers wanted during that time
- Specific Media Group and Justin Timberlake bought MySpace for 35 million dollars
- They relaunched in June of 2013
- Now has around 36 million users
- Recently, MySpace was bought by Time, Inc
- Launched in February of 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin
- Facemash was a similar website Mark Zuckerberg and a few other classmates made that had similar concepts to some seen on Facebook
- He created Facebook for an Art History project that had many different "pages" explaining the art
- Zuckerberg was accused of stealing the idea of Facebook from some classmates that approached him for help to launch a website very similar to Facebook
- At the start, facebook was limited only to Harvard students, but slowly included more of the public
- All public could use Facebook by September, 2006
- By February, 2011, Facebook was the largest photo-sharing website
- Yahoo actually filed a lawsuit against Facebook in 2012 claiming that Facebook "infringed patents" that Yahoo had to customize their website to the customers needs and wants
- A social media network that allows you to post short messages called tweets
- Based in San Francisco, California
- Created by Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, Evan Williams and Noah Glass
- Launched in July of 2006
- Started out as an idea to communicate with a small group of coworkers on an app
- 2013:One of the top ten visited websites in the world
- In 2015, they had over 500 million users
- Twitter took over a company called Vine, which shares video clips, that has become another platform of successful social media
- Known for a unique feature called Trending Topics that shows the most popular topics around the world during a certain period of time
Youtube
- Started when PayPal employees starting videos by making it possible to upload and view their videos
- Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Charin were the founders
- Youtube officially launched on February 14th, 2005
- Early Youtube headquarters was in San Mateo, California
- First ever video on Youtube was Me at the Zoo published by Jawed Charin
- By mid-2006, Youtube was one of the fastest growing websites on the market
- Youtube was sold to Google for 1.65 billion dollars in 2006
- Founders still worked for Youtube, but under the mother company, Google
- After much success, Youtube started producing award shows, presidential debates and gave movie companies permission to upload full length movies to watch for money
- Youtube has found/allowed ways for their video creators to make money from their videos(some actually are a Youtuber as a full time job)
- An app for photo and video sharing with others around the world
- Created by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger in October, 2010 in San Francisco, California
- Gained 1 million users a few months after launching, in December of 2010
- A popular trend on Instagram is to added hashtags, which were created in 2011, to find photos with certain similarities
- Instagram's main audience is to people under the age of 35(90% of their users are under 35 years old)
- An interesting feature on Instagram when you post a picture is that you can alter/filter it to enhance the picture
- By 2015, there were 500 million users
Connection to A Changing World
All of these forms of social media have helped to connect the world by creating relationships regardless of their physical location. This has been able to help people that feel alone or unattached to the people surrounding them. Social media is a form of communication that many generations haven't been exposed to until now. I think it is changing how we perceive and talk to people online and in person.
My Reaction
I think it is amazing how all of these websites have helped people connect with others that are far apart physically. All of these websites have connected people in some way that wouldn't have been possible without them. But, with every positive there is a negative. This is something that I have experienced first hand when people become addicted to their phones and don't always pay attention to what is happening in the world in front of them. With a new generation completely surrounded by technology 100% of the time, it is hard to separate your virtual world and physical world in front of you. I sometimes think that we are all missing experiences that are progress right now in exchanged for talking about things happening in the future or past. These are all crazy concepts to think about and decide whether the negatives out way the positive or vice versa.
Works Cited
- "102 Free Images - Photos, Illustrations, Vector Graphics: Youtube."Youtube. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 May 2016.
- Bosker, Bianca. "New MySpace Logo Unveiled (PICTURE)." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, n.d. Web. 20 May 2016.
- "History of Facebook." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 20 May 2016.
- "Instagram." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 20 May 2016.
- "Myspace." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 20 May 2016.
- "Twitter." Wikipedia. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 May 2016.
- "Youtube." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 20 May 2016.