The series on the intellectuals and geniuses continues with social media. I have spoken about social media often, but not really about its origins.
Social media really came out in the late 1990s with BlackPlanet and College Club. Basically if you were a programming wiz with web development and HTML experience, creating a social network was very possible.
During the 2000s, MySpace and Friendster came on the scene. Then a 19 year old sophomore at Harvard named Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook in 2004. The initial purpose was to make it exclusive for Harvard students only. They then started expanding to colleges around the country and the world. You could not get an account prior to 2006 unless your college was listed and you had a .edu email. Now the entire world can sign up for an access Facebook.
While Facebook eventually became the world's #1 network, there has been more competition from Twitter, Foursquare, Instagram, Google + , LinkedIn, and Pinterest. Despite all of their various efforts, Facebook has remained strong and Zuckerberg is worth billions.
Now this is not bad at all. A so called "geek" and "loner" created a site to help others connect with their friends worldwide and became wealthy from it. It appears being smart definitely paid off for young Zuckerberg, who isn't even 30 yet.
Social media, as I have also mentioned before, seems here to stay in our culture. We should encourage our youth to learn about computers and web development so they develop great sites and apps to assist the world. Knowledge is definitely power now.
No comments:
Post a Comment