History and Impact of Social Media

SOCIAL MEDIA

Introduction

It can be define as,“Social media is to the way of communication between different communities in which they share , produce and exchange thoughts , opinion through networks. It is define as a group of internet based application that build on the ideological and technological foundations of web 2 and that allow the creation and exchange of user generated content.” Most of us know social media from its different tools and communities. Face book, MySpace, YouTube, and Wikipedia are the most famous. The tools of social media – we can also call them “Web 2.0” tools – developed quickly, and new tools, functions, and services are born every day.

It also includes usage of mobile and internet that create highly interactive platforms through which people of different communities discuss, create and modify user generated content. It produces a change in communities, organization, and institutions by combining it on a same platform towards individual. Social media imply two‐way interaction, so included in social media is any means of communication that allows a interaction.

Get Help With Your Essay

If you need assistance with writing your essay, our professional essay writing service is here to help!
Find out more about our Essay Writing Service

The unstable growth of Social Media provided millions of people the opportunity to create and share content on a large scale imaginable a few years ago. Large participation in these social networks are reacted in the countless number of opinions, news, and product reviews .These are constantly posted and discussed in social sites. Given this widespread generation and use of content, it is natural to target one’s messages to highly connected people. They will propagate them further in the social network.

Now, Social media is a framework like a honeycomb in the world, which is surrounded all the world in a global way. It affects the whole of the society at the same time to all the persons of different countries equally. Social media has a wide range in the present times.

Social media have many different forms in which it interact with different peoples. It includes social networking, wikis, internet forums, social blogs, weblogs , photographs , video these forums on a daily basis in business, social life and for entertainment. [1]

History:

The history of social media start within the invention of computers. It covers many eras to reach its complete and develop form. The development of computers from mechanical era to electrical era had human great invention. The social media had arrived at the end of the 19^th century. Now, it is used in the increasing number of users to find everything at one place and time. The history of social media lied in three terms for example

1. Before the dawning(1969-1995 )
2. The dawning(1995-2005)
3. After the dawning(2006-present)

2.Before the Dawning:

In 1969 CompuServe was first introduced in computers to run different mechanisms. The Arpanet service is introduced in 1969.In 1971 first e-mail was introduced in the market, which led e-mailing history. In 1978 project butenburg started. These are all features in the computers. The birth of sp@m.In .The whole earth lectronic link The Well was came into market in 1985.

In 1988 Internet Relay Chat(IRC) is used in computers. In 1989 World Wide Web w3c was introduced. From 1991 -94 approximately 2.6 million internet users are produced and now, the world wide web goes to public. The first web page is also created Tim Berners Lee and Mosaic is created , during these years first blog JUSTIN LINKS made and also THE GLOBE.

1. The Dawning :

During 1995-2005 multiple pages or apps came into existence in the market which are such as:

• ICQ , a free instant messaging software
• Microsoft Hotmail
• Sixdegrees.com
• In year 1999 , 70 million computers connected to internet
• In year 1998 major search engine Google came into existence
• In 2001 Wikipedia-a free Encyclopedia
• Also apple iPods’
• 2003 , Skype
• Linked in
• 2004-facebook for Harvard students
• Image hostin-flickr
• In 2005 – face book for high school students

3.After The Dawning :

In 2006-13 an increasing number of users increased day by day. In 2006 approx. 400 million searches per day on Google observed. Twitter and you tube users number also increased.

• Face book , in 2009;350 million users
• 2011 face book and twitter had 550 million and 56 million users , respectively.
• From 2011, social media is virtually accessible from anywhere in the world.

The internet population is more than 2.4 billion users,today.

Types:

Social media can be divided into following categories regarding social presence , media richness and self presentation. It had following types:

1. collaborative projects
2. blogs and micro blogs
3. content communities
4. social networking site
5. virtual game worlds
6. virtual social worlds

Examples:

There are many examples of social media belonging to different types which had various aspects as following:

1-Wikipedia:

It was firstly lunched by jimmy wale and Larry Sanger in January 15,2001. Wikipedia is the example of all wikis and “wiki-like” works. It is a search web site. We only write the topic in the address bar and then it give a lot of information on that topic. It give also the option of different language like English, Eesti, Arabic, Francais, and Italian etc. On this site, information of all the subjects are available in all the language. Due to different language facility, every person can get knowledge and ideas in his own language. The basic idea behind wikis is to provide voluntary, decentralised and open information. Text can be added or corrected, and new sections can be added without the need to modify the structure of the entire page.

2-Twitter:

Twitter is also a shape of face book but from twitter we can only sent short texts. It is online social networking and microblogging service that make able to users send and read short 140-character text messages. From the way of twitter, people exchange ideas,thought and information from their relatives and friends. These messege are called tweets commonly.There is no opportunity to justify a point of view or cite sources, and because of this, political messaging and conversation can be more heated and critical here than on other social media platforms.

Despite this, Twitter can be used for active political discussion. Twitter can also be used to steer the user to more detailed content elsewhere, through web links or other references. However, studies on the use of Twitter to influence voting behaviour highlight only small groups of “super users”.

3- YouTube and Dailymotion:

YouTube is the Internet’s leading video service. It began operating in 2005, and grew very quickly, with 50 million visits to the site just by the end of the same year. In 2010, there were already more than 2 billion visits to You-Tube every day. Th e basic idea behind YouTube is that users upload videos to the site and at the same time, watch and comment on what they see. Based on the number of viewers, the most popular videos on YouTube are music videos, entertainment programmes, and news videos, but there are also some user-made videos about personal problems that have found quite a large audience.

4–Facebook:

Facebook was first lunched in February 2004.Facebook is a online connection among the people which are well-known to each other. They posted their photos, videos, and many other blogs. Its registration is open from the age of 13 to older. Most consider Facebook as the very image of social media. The basic idea is to off er each registered user the chance to create a user profile with pictures and to keep in touch with their so-called “friends”, or contacts they link to on the site. Facebook wasn’t the first of its kind: similar services already existed in the late 1990s, but the way Harvard university student linked a person’s photograph and profile to others and created a way to share thoughts, pictures and links was completely new. It was easy for users to adapt to it. Facebook was first available in February 2004 to Harvard students. Within one year, Facebook was used in almost numbers have changed or become outdated. Th e worldwide attraction with Facebook is based on the possibility it offers to be in contact with people whose e-mail addresses and phone chance to create networks: Facebook’s activity is based only on communities. Being on Facebook is not just limited to information within a group of friends. Through groups, users can form new networks. A user’s posting, in the form of text, pictures or both, can receive feedback from other users in the form of the ”Like” button, and the opt ion to make their own comments. They can also forward the posting to their own Facebook contacts using the “Share” option. One popular feature Facebook supports is community pages for common interests. Many political candidates create a page for themselves, and when a user clicks on the “Like” button, that user indicates that they would like to receive updates each time the candidate adds something to Facebook.

5-Google :

It had many benefits for different communities. Its uses are multiple range from education to all social aspects in life. It is helpful for many peoples and users.

Impacts Of Social Media:

1. News :

Social media is a way of information. It has become an important source of news. While the credibility of some sources can clearly be contested, news channels give updates on significant happenings all over the world. Their availability on social networks makes news more accessible. Additionally, news quickly gets passed around the networks in ways never experienced before.

2. Interaction :

Social media has furthered interaction by such a massive scale that is hard not to notice it. It allows people to keep in touch in a more regularly, and sometimes, more closely, than was ever before because of time. People cities or continents apart can keep in touch so effortlessly, creating an opportunity to experience different cultures.

3.Political Landscapes:

Social media has developed greater political awareness and organization, which has in some cases rewritten entire political landscapes. It has particularly played a large part in the Iran elections, and Obama’s reelection for a second term as US President, and inspired the political unrests in Egypt.

4.Learning :

Actually, learning is a two way process. Social media has also played a large part in development literacy. Children who start using the platforms develop early communication skills, and generally become more literate. This is an encouraging trend, and thanks to the huge availability of information, both simplistic and complex on the internet, anyone can become as smart or intelligent as they desire.

5.Marketing :

The whole dynamics of marketing have been changed. People can do his business sitting in his own home. In a few minutes, they check the sample online and give order for delivery. They are able to understand the needs of the market from the market itself, greatly altering the way marketing has been done in the past.

Advantages:

These modern technology has become our life very easy. It has removed the distance between the people. Due to this reason, people are always in a contact and share their feeling with one another. Its make the world as a globe. We aware every time from all breaking news that what is doing in our country at this time. As different parts of the world advance at different pace in education, business, tourism and so on, people tend to migrate from place to place for varying reasons, ranging from business-related reasons to pleasure-related reasons. This act of migration causes families, friends, lovers, and other related people to stay separated by distance.

It would be quite emotionally worrying for one to find out that he or she would be either temporarily or permanently away from his or her family. There could be psychological effects associated with being away from home. Most people go through a period of initial depression, cultural shock, or homesickness no matter how well they are prepared. The temporary feelings of missing one’s family, home environment, friends, etc – along with the initial cultural shock, and readjustment to your new life could be frightening. Though cannot replace the feeling of being home with one’s family in person, the technology of Skype has made it possible for many people to make free internet voice and video calls. People will worry less about cost and converse in a relaxed manner.

Video-chats, such that Skype technology provides, could go a long way in maintaining the friendly bond in such cases. Social networking can enrich social lives for those separated from family and friends by long distances, bringing them together despite the physical separation. This has been observed in a number of people in the armed forces that use Skype, Facebook, and twitter to stay in touch.

Though the world is quite large, it now seems “small” due to social networking. People from different parts of the globe can connect to other people in other parts of the world, exchanging information and pleasantries. The future of social networking will have the world to seem even “smaller”

Disadvantages:

There are always two sides of every coin. Mostly people do not use this technology properly. Social media is just a tool or mean for people to use. It is still up to the users on how to use this tool (just like a knife, can help you to cut food or hurt others). “Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project and Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center conducted a study on “The Future of Online Socializing” from the highly engaged, diverse set of respondents to an online, opt-in survey consisted of 895 technology stakeholders and critics.” The new generation people spend their a lot of time on face book daily. due to this reason, they can not get their aim of his future. The negative effects presented by the respondents included time spent online robs time from important face-to-face relationships; the internet fosters mostly thin relationships; the act of leveraging the internet to engage in social connection exposes private information; the internet allows people to silo themselves, limiting their exposure to new ideas; and the internet is being used to engender intolerance.

Some respondents also highlighted that there will be development of some new psychological and medical syndromes that will be “variations of depression caused by the lack of meaningful quality relationships”, and a “new world society”. The term, “Social Networking”, has begun to deceive the users to believe they are social creatures. For instance, spending a couple of hours using Farmville and chatting with friends concurrently does not convert into social skills. People become dependent on the technology and forget how to socialise in face-to-face context. The online personality of a person might be totally different from his/her offline character, causing disorder when the two personalities meet. It is apparent in online dating when the couple gets together in face-to-face for the first time. Their written profiles do not clearly represent their real-life characters. It is more inviting for people to type something that others want to hear than saying the truth.

Besides the “friendship”, creators of social networking sites and users redefine the term, “privacy” in the Internet as well. The challenge in data privacy is to share data while protecting personally identifiable information. Almost any information posted on social networking sites is permanent. Whenever someone posts pictures or videos on the web, it becomes viral. When the user deletes a video from his/her social network, someone might have kept it and then posted it onto other sites like YouTube already. People post photographs and video files on social networking sites without thinking and the files can reappear at the worst possible time.

Table

Conclusion :

Today’s social media have helped make real the idea of a “global village”. Social media has changed the way people communicate. Social media’s greatest change to the way people communicate is user-produced content and the fast and flexible sharing of this content Though the world is quite large, it now seems “small” due to social networking. People from different parts of the globe can connect to other people in other parts of the world, exchanging information and pleasantries. The future of social networking will have the world to seem even “smaller”. Everything has some positive aspects as well as negative so does the social media. But it contributes a lot to the human being in different forms from small scale to a large scale in every field.

[1]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media (accessed 4 13sunday, 2014).