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Experts have suggested that while social media has grown in quantity, features and coverage over the past 10-20 years, its evolution could be traced back to the “dawn of human interaction” (Edosomwan, Prakasan, Kouame, Watson, Seymour, 2011). This timeline contains 20 key events of the evolution of social media from 1970’s to this day. In the 1970’s and 1980’s we see technologies, such as MUD, BBS Usenet, and that could be considered the foundation of social media since they had features of sharing information with other users. In the 1990’s, sites such as sixdegrees.com and classmates.com were launches. These sites are more similar to the social networks we use today. In the 2000’s we see the introduction of sites that lead social media today. In the 2010’s, while there is only one major introduction, events in this time period show how important social media has come to be. Society should be aware of the changes that have occurred for many reasons. David McCullough once wrote “How can we know who we are and where we are going if we don't know anything about where we have come from and what we have been through, the courage shown, the costs paid, to be where we are?". While he does not refer to social media, it applies to it as well. If we don’t understand the evolution of social media then we might not know how we know if we are using social media properly or whether we are using it to its potential.  We cannot fully understand social media if we do not look at how it got to be what it is today.  Social media is made up of changing technologies which “affects how we see the world, our communities, our relationship and ourselves.” Due to the importance and the effect that social media has on our lives we must understand it.

Edosomwan, S., Prakasan, S., Kouame, D., Watson, J., Seymour, T. (2011).  The history of social media and its impact on businesses. The Journal of Applied Management and Entrepreneurship, 16, (3).