I remember being in High School when I first heard of the term ‘Six Degrees of Seperation’. The premise of the idea is quite simple. Every human being on our planet is connected with another person in 6 or less connections. In the current Social Media age, this makes sense especially considering of the average Facebook user (median) has 200 connections, this could easily multiple to 7.6 billion in 6 steps. You just have to remember that PewDiePie has over 100 million subscribers on YouTube to grasp how quickly you can be connected.
However in the 1990s, platforms like YouTube were not available yet. There were however inventions that completely changed the way we live, interact and experience the internet, like the aforementioned impacts of companies like AOL, eBay, Amazon and BlackBoard. One of the few Social Media platforms that has the element of Six Degrees of Separation embedded in its public features is LinkedIn. With LinkedIn you can see if a person is 1st Degree (a connection), 2nd Degree (connected to one of your connections) or 3rd Degree. The last one basically implies that the is at least 3 degrees of connection away. This idea however didn’t orginate from LinkedIn. It was implemented by SixDegrees.com, a website founded in 1997. SixDegrees.com was a social-networking website that allow users to interact with one another through messages and bulletin boards, allowing you to list friends, family and acquaintances in the process. With over 3.500.000 users before the year 2000, you could see it a the first major online social-networking platform.
Like SixDegrees, there were several other companies that created elements and features that we now consider essential as part of a Social Media platform. One of those features that we rarely acknowledge is chat. WhatsApp, Snapchat and Telegram is chat. WeChat, TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook all have built in chat functions. Even YouTube has chat. While online chatrooms now are slitghly different and a lot more advanced than the were in the pre-Y2K era, the Internet Relay Chat (IRC) had existed for almost 10 years when ICQ was first released in late 1996. The Messenger, derived from the phrase ‘I Seek You’ was a game changer for many Internet users at the time. It was free to download and one of the first stand alone messenger services available. AOL, being the leading chat provider at the time didn’t hesitate and acquired ICQ in 1998 for a whopping $287 million.
ICQ grow rapidly and reached 100 million users in less than 5 years time. It’s popularity however was relatively short lived, as MSN Messenger quickly became the go to Messenger application in the mid 2000s. Something that often gets overlooked, is that an at the time relatively new Chinese company, Tencent, launched a Messenger app that ended up becoming bigger than AOL Instant Messenger, ICQ and MSN Messenger combined. Tencent, found in 1998, launched their app in 1999, and after renaming their app from OICQ to QQ (a result of a relatively logical lawsuit of AOL), and kept developing the app, which is still one of the 3 biggest Messaging App 20 years later. While short lived, ICQ’s succes had a lot of impact on online connectivity. It helped make online messaging mainstream, including in communities in developing countries like Suriname. Online Messaging helped popularize Internet shorthand/slang, like BRB, LOL and the infamous PIR.
Aside from the goal to connect and interact with the world, another major 1990s development which eventually led to the growth of Social Media was the ability to create content, especially freely generating content without a gatekeeper. The Internet was, and still is, a collection of human stories where one can tell a story from their own perspective and experience. As a result blogging became extremely popular as a way to tell stories that wouldn’t break the mainstream news cycle. The blog featured the first opportunity for anyone with an internet connection to share their news with the world. While in this stage, it would require the blogger to have some basic knowledge on both technical/website knowledge and writing skills, it would soon change.
[...to be continued...]
About Social Media in Suriname
This story is part 30 of my #Maynia goal to write a book in the month of May. The topics I'll be writing about from May 1st until May 31st, 2020:
(Want to read them all? The chapters will become clickable as the month progresses. Please note that I'm not always writing in chronological order, so check all 31 to see which are clickable)
The history of the Internet according to the Internet
1 - Predicting the Future
2 - The origin of the online community
3 - The birth of the World Wide Web
The World Wide Web
4 - Endless opportunities
5 - For education and entertainment
6 - Social Media before Social Media
The Rise of Web 2.0
7 - In Search of the first online Empire
8 - User Generated Content
9 - Let’s Get Connected
The Golden Generation
10 - From friends and relatives to personal interest
11 - The birth of the like button
12 - Being number 1
The Battle for the internet
13 - Socialnomics and the fight for online supremacy
14 - The features and takeovers that shaped the landscape
15 - It’s more than just Social
The Mainstream and The Alternatives
16 - The rise of the creator and the influencer
17 - The comeback of traditional media
18 - The age of information overload
The Marketeer and the Community
19 - Can’t we all have a little fun?
20 - Is age really just a number
21 - The Dangers of Dopamine and Instant Gratification
Suriname: From Dail Up to Tik Tok
22 - Getting connected
23 - Before Facebook Conquered the World
24 - The Growth of Social Media minded Suriname
25 - The Rise of Social Media Entertainment
26 - Twisting The Rules
27 - Free Facebook
28 - The diversification of Social Media
29 - From Brand Ambassadors to Social Media Influencers
30 - The Fight against Fake
The Recap
31 - What’s next?
Maynia Log
Learn more about Maynia by reading about it here.
Today's word count: 686
Total word count: 5.053
Daily review:
Finally passed the 5k milestone. Took awhile, but still very happy.
Daily question:
This month I'll post a daily question on which you can comment. Everyday I will give away a Hive SBI to my favorite. 😉
Today's question:
What is your favorite messenger app?
Sources:
https://www.brandwatch.com/blog/facebook-statistics/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_degrees_of_separation#Website_and_application
https://www.cnet.com/news/aol-acquires-instant-message-firm/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant_messaging
https://medium.com/@rchen8/the-history-of-internet-communities-f0234db848b1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_blogging
