beginnings of the Social Network

The beginnings of the Social Network

Originally, the term “social network” did not refer to the Internet at all, but to an association of a group of people with specific relationships, either two-way or one-way. The phrase came to sociologist James Barnes in 1954.

The emergence of the World Wide Web in 1969 led to the development of the social networks to which we are now accustomed. More useful information can be found here.

The Military Social Network

The progenitor of modern social networks using computer devices is considered to be a network created in 1971 for interaction between military personnel.

The invention of ‘IRC’ in 1988 by a Finnish scientist marked the beginning of real-time communication.

But social networking reached its peak in 1995, when American Randy Conrads launched Classmates.com, a site for finding friends from various educational institutions. Today, it has over 50 million registered users.  The Russian version of the project is Odnoklassniki, which has 290 million people.

How did Social Networking come into being

The most popular social networks

Facebook Inc. and its eponymous website originated in 2004 as a team effort among Harvard students. They were founded by four friends. Until September 2006, registration was only available within the US. Then it was open to all Internet users over the age of 16, making it the leading social network in terms of traffic, reaching around 2 million users per month.

March 2006 was a historic milestone for Twitter, which was positioned as a vehicle for the efficient exchange of information among employees of the company with the same name. In mid-July, it was opened to all adult users of the internet. Today it has over 300 million followers. In October 2010, the App Store offered Burbn, invented by Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom, a free application for sharing videos and photos. The project was later renamed Instagram, which everyone knows. Here you could make appointments, check in and post photos. Soon the creators noticed a huge rush to post photos and removed unclaimed features. The app now boasts 200 million active subscribers and more than 16 billion uploaded videos and photos.