It seems crazy to think that, a mere twenty years ago, the term ‘social media’ had not yet been coined. Even for those of us who remember the years before social media (I’m showing my age now!), it seems incredible to think that we went about our lives and our business without instant access to an entire global community.
The rise of social media is of interest to marketers, as it tells us a lot about how our industry has grown and developed over the past couple of decades. And understanding our past is a great way to predict our future.
So, I thought it might be good to take a quick tour through social media, looking at its history and taking in some interesting facts about it. As well as being a bit of fun, this could also help us to take an informed look into the future of social media marketing.
Social media history timeline
Social media has had a whirlwind rise to its current state. Here’s a quick timeline of some important moments:
- 1997. The first social media site, SixDegrees.com, is born. Based on the idea that there are only six degrees of separation between any two people on the planet, SixDegrees.com was designed to help people connect with others. Much like modern social media, SixDegrees allowed users to build personal profiles, set up networks, and send messages - albeit to a more limited degree than today!
- 2000. AmIHotOrNot.com hits the internet. This infamous site let users upload photos of themselves, and others would vote on their attractiveness. It’s not a concept that would fly in todays post MeToo world, but at the time it was surisingly popular. The creators of both Facebook and YouTube are said to have been influenced by it.
- 2002. Friendster launches. Friendster was initially a dating site, designed to connect people with mutual friends. What was revolutionary about Friendster, however, was its ‘status update’ mechanic. Users could tell other people what they were up and and how they were feeling in the moment via simple status updates. People loved it! They loved it so much that the site could not cope with the amount of traffic it was getting. Something similar but more sophisticated was clearly needed. Enter…
- 2003. MySpace. Ah, MySpace. If you were a teenager in the 00s, MySpace was the place to be. MySpace nostalgia is having a moment right now, and to be fair it does seem, with hindsight, like a lost paradise. Users had full control of their profiles, and were able to express their individuality and creativity with ease. It wasn’t stuffed with ads, it wasn’t overly commercialised, and it emphasised personal connection over corporate gain. Then it got sold to NewsCorp for several million dollars, the ads flooded in, and the users left. There’s a lesson there for us marketers - try not to destroy the ‘social’ element of social media.
- 2003-2005. The birth of Facebook. Facebook was originally conceived as something like ‘HotOrNot.com’ - it was literally a ‘book’ of faces. You’d upload a profile picture and people would gather to comment on it. But Mark Zuckerberg quickly realised that it was the social element of this which had the most traction. In 2005, ‘The Facebook’ became simply ‘Facebook’ - and the rest is history.
- 2005-2007. The mid 00s saw an avalanche of new social media sites. Following in the footsteps of Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Photobucket, Reddit, Flickr, WordPress, and more all launched during this period.
- 2006. Twitter launches. These days, Twitter is an embattled platform, but for a long time its unique format made it the go-to place for news, opinion, commentary, and gossip.
- 2006. The first paid premium social media package is launched, by LinkedIn. For some, this marks the beginning of the end of the ‘golden age’ of truly social media. For advertisers and corporate interests, however, this move generated a lot of interest in the potential of social media for marketing.
- 2007. The birth of the hashtag. Hashtags have since been instrumental in allowing people to mobilise, organise, and define everything from political movements to funny memes.
- 2009. 2009 was the year the Boomers joined Facebook - and they joined because of Facebook games. Remember all those FarmVille invites that your parents pestered you with back in the day? Blame 2009 and the launch of Facebook games.
- 2010. Unicode integrates emojis. Emojis had been steadily gaining ground since they were first added to Japanese mobile photos in 1999. In 2010, Unicode adopted emojis, allowing people to easily integrate emojis into their text without having to know code to do so. It’s fair to say that, at this point, emojis became an integral part of digital language.
- 2010. Enter Instagram. Instagram brought photo filters to the table - something that no graphic designer, selfie-addict, or influencer could be without these days.
- 2011. The Arab Spring, which saw uprisings across the Arabic-speaking world. Why is this a significant moment in social media history? Well, because social media networks were used extensively to not only organise protests, but also to get the word out about what was happening despite the best efforts of mainstream national broadcasters. This was the point at which governments began to take social media seriously.
- 2011. Snapchat launches. Snapchat’s unique formula emphasised the fleeting, ephemeral nature of life and conversation. Content on Snapchat vanishes after a set amount of time. This appealed greatly to teenagers, who didn’t want parents scrolling back through their timelines.
- 2012. Facebook hits one billion users.
- 2016. Facebook Live is launched. This follows various other platforms’ experiments with livestreaming, including Periscope and Meerkat. In the same year, Instagram launches ‘Stories’ - which combined Snapchat’s disappearing post act with Instagram’s own highly visual format.
- 2016. 2016 was the year of Fake News. This is the year of the election of Donald Trump in the USA. This election was controversial for the amount of disinformation and ‘fake news’ disseminated on social media surrounding the election. It was later revealed that Russian activists and bot farms had colonised much of the conversation on social media, and potentially had a significant influence on the outcome of the election. It’s safe to say that trust in social media was deeply dented by the end of 2016.
- 2017. Twitter doubles its character limit, in a move that some see as heralding trouble for the platform.
- 2018. The Cambridge Analytica Scandal breaks. This was a watershed moment for social media marketers, as it forever changed the way we gather and process social media data. The revelation that Cambridge Analytica had been unethically harvesting data rocked the world of social media, and led to the hashtag DeleteFacebook trending.
- 2022. Twitter is acquired by Elon Musk, leading to great changes and controversy on the platform.
What can we learn from the history of social media?
They say that the best predictor of the future is the past. So, what can we learn from the past of social media, and how can it help us to market on social media in the future?
Well, the first thing to note is that social media changes incredibly fast. It’s constantly evolving, and what’s popular on one platform quickly gets adopted by others.
For example, at the very start of social media, Facebook ‘took inspiration’ from HotOrNot.com. But very quickly it turned into a kind of sleeker MySpace. MySpace itself adopted much of the format of Friendster. And everyone drew from the USPs of later platforms like Instagram and Snapchat to offer filtered photo effects and vanishing ‘Stories’.
The lesson here is that if one thing becomes popular, you can bet that the other platforms will very quickly adapt to offer and/or accomodate something very similar. So, keep a close eye on trends.
The second most important thing to note is that too much commercialism is damaging to social media.
MySpace went under not just because other platforms like Facebook were making waves. The main nail in the coffin of MySpace was its increased commercialism after it was sold. People went to MySpace to express themselves and connect on a personal level with their friends. They didn’t want to be bombarded with ads, or to feel like they were a product to be exploited.
Similarly, the Cambridge Analytica data harvesting scandal severely damaged trust in social media - especially in marketers using social media. People do not like feeling exploited. In the years since the Cambridge Analytica scandal, people have become intensely protective of their data - and they are increasingly backed up in this by legislation like the GDPR.
This could be seen as a problem for marketers. After all, we rely on customer data to make our marketing relevant for our audiences. And we’re the reason why social media has adverts and commerce. How can we reconcile people’s desire for social media to be non-commercial with our own need to market and convert?
As always, the answer is to give value. People don’t mind commercial posts if they are interesting, entertaining, engaging, and relevant for them.
So:
- Do your audience research
- Be transparent with your data gathering and usage, and always ask permission before taking data
- Concentrate on building long-term relationships with audiences rather than on making a quick buck
- Segment your audiences for more effective targeting
- Use dynamic automations to personalise your content
- Keep a close eye on your engagement metrics
- Never assume that you’ve nailed the formula - remember, social media changes all the time!
For more on social media marketing, including a complete history of the most relevant platforms, check out my book ‘Marketing Strategy’.
Order through the Let’sTalk Strategy website for a 20% discount!
