Essay On The History Of Social Networking

Social networking has been around for more than just a few years. In fact, it has been around since before the 1970s. According to nethistory.info, the first email was sent in 1965. Social networking has grown from a simple email, to a larger scale, including internet searches, communities that decide how to define things, Facebook and Twitter. Social networking has turned from a simple form of communications to a tool that is used to share the most intimate parts of people's lives.

“Ray Tomlinson is credited with inventing email in 1972. Like many of the Internet inventors, Tomlinson worked for Bolt Beranek and Newman as an ARPANET contractor. He picked the @ symbol from the computer keyboard to denote sending messages from one computer to another. So then, for anyone using Internet standards, it was simply a matter of nominating name-of-the-user@name-of-the-computer. Internet pioneer Jon Postel, who we will hear more of later, was one of the first users of the new system, and is credited with describing it as a "nice hack". It certainly was, and it has lasted to this day.” (http://www.nethistory.info/History%20of%20the%20Internet/email.html)

In 1989, the “You've got mail” greeting sent out by AOL debuted. 5 years later, the first advertisers appeared on AOL. This also signified the 1 millionth member to join America Online. Within 2 years AOL jumps from one million members to five million members and includes a buddy list and it's “running man” symbol. (http://corp.aol.com/about-aol/overview)

Social networking expanded more and more to more than just emails and instant messages. It expanded to an online dictionary where other users can edit and create articles to share with the public. There has been much debate about the va...

... middle of paper ...

... on the merits of his own accomplishments. Instagram acts as a portfolio for artists, photographers and many more. Where 20 years ago we would have to provide information face to face, these sites allow us to show our life's work in one place, to make it more solid than an idea, and to share our thoughts with a common audience. Lives are built through social networking and careers are created. although this sounds like an easy option, people still have to work to promote their offerings. Like anything once the data is out there it can't be removed but it can be forgotten.

The future of social networking is constantly changing, and could evolve into anything in the future. Eventually, everything will be linked to one person, what they have viewed or Liked on Youtube, the channels they subscribe to, the pages they visit, will all link back to their individual person.