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Photo Credit: thegospelcoaltion.org |
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Photo Credit: quickmeme.com |
The actual road to modern social networking and what we call “social media” has many of its electronic roots in the ARPANET era. These roots stem from CompuServe's bulletin board, AOL’s early instant messaging (AIM) and early web logs. Eventually this lead to the first online communities, Blogger and Twitter. We began with what seemed to be totally free, word-of-mouth connecting networks that evolved into the mega-corporations such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Google (which owns YouTube, Blogger and Google+). Here is an excellent historical, social media timeline provided by the “Sun Sentinel”:
1971 – The first email is sent (between two computers sitting on the same desk).
1979 – Usernets and BBS (Bulletin Board Systems) came online, allowing users to exchange data over phone lines.
1980 – CompuServe and Prodigy hit the scene with the first commercial offering of news, weather, shopping, games, and more.
1991 – America Online launches AOL for DOS and quickly rises to one of the most popular online destinations with over 30 million members in its prime. Millions of people used AOL as their first gateway to the World Wide Web.
1994 – Geocities launches as a community where users create their own websites categorized by one of six "cities.”
1995 – TheGlobe.com gave users the freedom to post their own content and interact with other users.
1995 – Classmates.com is born allowing users to find and connect with former acquaintances from school life.
1997 – ICQ (Internet Relay Chat) is purchased by America Online; AOL Instant Messenger launches, and a “new language” is born (i.e., OMG, LOL, BRB, etc.).
1997 – SixDegrees.com launches allowing users to create profiles and list friends.
2002 – Friendster.com launches and quickly grows to three million users in three months.
2003 – MySpace.com is frantically coded in 10 days to try and mimic the rapid growth of Friendster. Grows to the most popular social networking site in 2006 with 100 million users. LinkedIn and Photobucket also join the game.
2004 – Facebook launches originally as a way for college students to connect. The year also saw the birth of Digg and Flickr.
2005 – YouTube launches and gives anyone with a video camera the chance to become an Internet sensation.
2006 – Twitter launches and squeezes our communication into 140 character "tweets.”
2008 – Facebook overtakes MySpace as the most popular social networking site.


The following video is also very helpful:
Today, there are many new social networks and the number of subscribers easily reaches into the many billions. Newer, more pictorial networks such as Pintrest, Instagram, SnapChat chat and What’s App have provided new havens for those more interested in share pictures, videos and direct messages via smartphones. Let’s face it, there are more mobile users today accessing the Internet than there are desktop users.
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Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Google have always been selling the promise of access to our psychographic information as a mineable commodity, or as it is tod ay, the outright selling o ur data to third parties. I know what you’re thinking … only your friends and people you're connected to can see your data. This may have been true at one point in time, but there’s definitely no online privacy today ― at all. If you’re on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, YouTube and other social networks, vendors are paying to mine your data and to target your account for advertising. Businesses are paying big money for targeted promotions, running ads and exposing views of their promoted posts on all of these major social networks. The near future will bring new fees to any business who wants its message to show up in its social network timeline.
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Gone a re the days where your business post was easily seen by your business followers. Yes, your followers can see you on Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ but the post feed is not as “pure” as it was in the past. This is especially true on Facebook where you have to buy ads or promote posts to be easily seen in your followers’ Facebook page timeline.
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Photo Credit: blurgroup.com |
Today there are over 350 social networks. Yet, there is a change in the air. Younger generations are moving away from Facebook, Twitter, and Google, opting for the more instant and visually oriented What’s App, Snap Chat and Instagram. Some say this is because they don’t want parental oversight, but I say they just want more privacy. The same privacy that we used to enjoy as adults. More adult migrations will begin to take place as unsettling news comes out on how social networking is negatively affecting marriages (linked to more divorces) and the loss of other types of face to face social connections. Plus most adults don’t realize they have lose their privacy. I think we will see other migrations taking place once new, more private networks emerge.
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Photo Credit: wallblog.co.uk |
In the past, I’ve written several prediction articles about social media. So in this article I am going to stick my neck out again. I predict right here and now that we’re on the verge of a new social networking era. One that will usher in private social networks that are pay to play. New (startup) social networks that will att ack the curre nt social network leaders where they are weakest (that currently poor consumer service, lack of privacy, aren't user-friendly, etc.). We will move into a dichotomy of pay-to-play or pay-with-your-privacy.
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My recommendation is if you have any social network accounts, take the time to back up the data you have posted to them. You can find out how to do this by Googling it or by looking in the help sectio n of the specific social network. If you don’t like what you have learned in this article, backup your data and asked to be removed from that network. Still, understand that whatever you have posted will be staying in their unlisted database for as long as they feel that data is valuable.
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Photo Credit: thefineline.com |
The same is true for how the social media giants treat us. If we work together, we can hold these social media firms accountable for how they treat us and what kind of service they provide. I recommend you contact your social networks if you have complaints and share those stories of abuse with your friends, family and co-workers. It might be a good idea to share your complaint on a different social network to avoid any retaliation from the offending network. If the stories go viral and get enough traction, the social giants will stand up and take notice. They have backed down in the past when enough people complained about bad policies or poor service.
Do yourself a favor: think carefully about what I have said and decide. It’s your life and privacy that’s at stake. Social Networking is at a crossroads and everyone is going to have to make a choice.
In this article, I have provided a brief history of the evolution of Social Networking, discussed its current state of affairs, and prognosticated about its imminent future. I provided a timeline of social media’s development and pointed out the direction that I see Social Networking taking in the near future.
That's my opinion. I look forward to reading yours.
If you liked this article, you can find more by typing “social media or social networking” in the search box at the top left of this blog. I further recommend reading “ Hector's the Connector’s Social Media Predictions for 2014,” “Internet Marketing: Lessons Learned & Best Practices Part 3 – The Social Media Dynamic,” “The Evolution of Internet Advertising,” and “How to Win Friends and Influence People in the 21st Century - Take Two.”
If you found this article useful, share it with your friends, families and co-workers. If you have a comment related to this article, leave it in the Comment sections below. I hope you have found these questions and answers useful. Thanks for sharing your time with me.

If you'd like a free copy of our eBook, "Internet Marketing Tips for the 21st Century," please fill in the form below and we'll email it to you. Your information is always kept private and is never sold.
If you found this article useful, share it with your friends, families and co-workers. If you have a comment related to this article, leave it in the Comment sections below. I hope you have found these questions and answers useful. Thanks for sharing your time with me.

If you'd like a free copy of our eBook, "Internet Marketing Tips for the 21st Century," please fill in the form below and we'll email it to you. Your information is always kept private and is never sold.
Hector Cisneros is COO and director of Social Media Marketing at Working the Web to Win, an award-winning Internet marketing company based in Jacksonville, Florida. He is also co-host of the weekly Internet radio show, "Working the Web To Win" on BlogTalkRadio.com, which airs every Tuesday at 4 p.m. Eastern. Hector is a syndicated writer and published author of “60 Seconds to Success.”
This is a really in-depth piece; the prediction with pay-to-play privatized social media platforms is also something that I've never heard before, but I can definitely see it moving in that direction. I hope it doesn't, but it may happen eventually, or there will continue to be the current business model where platforms profit from businesses paying for advertisements while the average user still maintains a free account. Or maybe they will offer a basic package that's free but restricts certain features that can be unlocked through a premium package, who knows what direction social media is heading toward.
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