The History and Evolution of Social Media | Webdesigner Depot.

The Maze of Social Media (picture from the article)

“Social media has become an integral part of modern society.

• There are general social networks with user bases larger than the population of most countries.
• There are niche sites for virtually every special interest out there.
• There are sites to share photos, videos, status updates, sites for meeting new people and sites to connect with old friends.
• It seems there are social solutions to just about every need.”

In this article, Cameron Chapman reviews the history and evolution of social media from its humble beginnings to the present day.

Unrelated to the article but interesting Infographic on Social Media (Image via Wikipedia)

Although the article is already two years old it gives a good overview and I recommend it. For your convenience I extracted the section headers from the article:

• Precursors to Social Media

• Usernets
• Bulletin Board Systems
• Online Services (CompuServe et al)
• IRC, ICQ, Instant Messaging
• Early Social Networks

• Dating Sites
• Forums
• Six Degrees
• AsianAvenue, MiGente, BlackPlanet
• LiveJournal
• World of Warcraft / MMORPGS
• Major Advances in Social Networking

• Friendster
• Hi5
• LinkedIn
• MySpace
• Facebook
• Other Major Social Networks
• Niche Social Networks

• Ning
• Company-Sponsored Social Networks
• Media Sharing

• Photobucket
• Flickr
• YouTube
• Revver
• Social News and Bookmarking

• Delicious
• Digg
• Reddit
• Real Time Updates

• Twitter
• Posterous
• Tumblr
• Other Services Adopt Real-Time Updates
• The iPhone’s Role in Real-Time Updates
• Lifestreaming and Lifecasting

• Ustream.tv
• Justin.tv
• FriendFeed
• Other Lifestreaming Sites
• Social Media Concerns and Criticism

• Social Media Used by Stalkers
• Social Media Used by Child Predators
• Privacy Concerns
• The Role of Social Media in Pop Culture

Related articles

• The History and Evolution of Social Media | Webdesigner Depot (the article quoted)
• From Social Networks to Collaboration Networks: The Next Evolution of Social Media for Business (forbes.com)
• Social Network: implementation strategy (morohen.wordpress.com)
• Social Media and the CEO (thielst.typepad.com)
• Development of Social Networking Systems on the Internet (ecrimeexpertblog.wordpress.com)
• Social Networking (ronmedlin.com)
• Social media ‘to generate $10bn’ (bbc.co.uk)
• Why Social Media Should Not Be Defined (theengagingbrand.typepad.com)