If you missed the previous entry on the precursors to social media, you can read it here.
By the early to mid 2000's, the number of people with access to the internet was growing and the idea of being able to network via the internet was starting to gain traction (note: this is not a fact; just based on my own memories). It wasn't going to be enough to just e-mail, instant message, and visit someone's web site. No, people wanted more and in 2003, the first shift in how the internet was used took place.
Myspace was, by many accounts, the originator of the social media site. Launched in 2003, the site quickly became the most popular social networking site, and at one point even passed Google as the most-visited site in the United States. You could add friends, send messages, view each other's photos, share status updates, and basically anything else they wanted you to know.
For a while, Myspace was THE place to be, but to me, it quickly became a popularity contest. People would request you as a friend just to boost the number of friends they had, but had no real interest in interacting with you, which seemed to defeat the purpose of the site. This didn't deter me from using it for a long while, especially the blog feature, but as time went on, it became clear that Myspace was losing traction.
As recently as a couple months ago, I had checked back in to see what the site was like, and unfortunately, it hasn't improved much. The site was slow, glitchy, and seemed to be overly focused on musicians and other celebrities, making it less of a social media site and more of a gossip site to me.
Looking at the path it's taken since the peak of it's popularity in 2006, the site will likely never ascend back to the levels of Facebook, Twitter, and other sites.
A sobering number is the number employees that Myspace has. In 2009, it had around 1600 employees. 2 years later, that number was down to 200.
What happened?
Well, Facebook decided to open its doors to anyone rather than just college students, developed a cleaner interface than Myspace, and took off.
I was slow to embrace Facebook myself. I had learned to enjoy Myspace and I had met some fun people on there, plus it had allowed me to keep in touch with people I had already known in real life. While the repeated friend requests from people who weren't actually trying to be friends was annoying, it ultimately didn't bother me too much.
However, I had a few people I worked with who had migrated to Facebook and encouraged me to do so. Like anything, it was awkward at first, and I certainly struggled initially to understand what I was doing on there, but I eventually realized that more people I knew were on Facebook, and it had helped me reconnect with several people from high school, which was an unexpected bonus.
I can't remember the exact point in which I completely abandoned Myspace, but it was roughly around 2011 when I stopped logging in regularly and moved strictly on to Facebook. I didn't use any other types of social media for a couple of years, choosing to focus on Facebook if I used anything.
The thing that became increasingly annoying to me was how many different sites seemed to be popping up. I know I've only mentioned the major players so far, but there were others methods, other types of sites that existed for short periods of times.
Some were geared more towards professionals, but many just seemed to be geared towards creating popularity contests. I joined my fair share of smaller sites, but not enthusiastic about them, I typically didn't stick with them for long periods of time. Most people on the sites were flaky and not actually trying to expand social media horizons, and that remains true to an extent to this day.
I haven't mentioned Twitter yet and it's not a mistake. I avoided Twitter for a long, long time, mostly because I didn't see the point in limiting how many characters I could use to get a point across. Why limit myself to 140 when I could use as many as I want on Facebook?
It seemed silly.
Then, in February of 2013, I took the plunge.
I'll admit, my first tweet is underwhelming, but it was the exact reason I joined. I had started my YouTube channel in September of 2012, and I quickly realized integrating it with Twitter could be beneficial (although not NEARLY as much as it could be). I made the decision after a couple of months and more than 2 years later, it's pretty much my preferred method of interacting with others online.
As of today, I've tweeted over 16,000 times, I have over 640 followers, and am following over 600 accounts I'm following. On Facebook, I have roughly 70 friends, but maybe post once or twice a week, and it's usually just pictures of my child. On Twitter, I sometimes post multiple tweets a day, and that doesn't include automated tweets that come from my YouTube channel and/or Twitch channel.
Twitter has proven to be an exceptional method of communicating with people and receiving feedback on virtually anything I say or do. While the number of interactions based on the number of followers is still pretty small, I've been reminded more than once that people are reading what I tweet, even if they aren't always responding.
I've also occasionally dabbled with Instagram, but that's not nearly as often and I've yet to find a good way to integrate it with my channel.
Google+ was an option as well, but I've never felt like that service ever fully realized what it was capable of, especially given Google's ownership of YouTube. The forced integration upset many users, although it didn't bother me all that much. I just never saw Google+ become what it could be, thus it was never really a viable option for me to completely jump in on.
In the end, I use Twitter the most, followed by Facebook, then Instagram in terms of the major social media sites, but the internet is full of smaller scale social sites.
Steam itself acts as a social media platform with it's chat/party system, and other sites such as the Gaming Tribe are trying new and unique ways to bring gamers together. It's not perfect, but it's a good start, and not just because that site is always giving stuff away.
The internet has grown since the early 2000's and social media has become a major staple of people's lives. But is it really all it's cracked up to be sometimes?
Next, social media has brought people together, but it also can bring out the worst in individuals who thrive under anonymity.
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