RRSS is the acronym for Social Networks, which, as you may already know, offer users the power to communicate with others, in a totally immediate way, through virtual spaces, no matter where they are on the planet. But what are their beginnings? Attention!
The origin of social media
It all started with the birth of the Internet in 1947 or so, although it is said that the first social network was SixDegrees in 1997. This network allowed you to locate other members of the network and create lists of friends. It was also based on the theory of six degrees of separation, which states that it is possible to connect with anyone else in the world in just six steps. However, the application was shut down in 2001.
A year later, other social networks arrived, such as Friendster or MySpace, but without a doubt, the one that would mark a before and after in 2003 was LinkedIn, a social network that is still booming today. Likewise, its impact at that time on the business world was immediate, and in 2008, it reached more than 25 million registered users, extending to companies in 150 different sectors.
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The emergence of Facebook
In 2004, a young university student named Mark Zuckerberg, now a world-renowned Harvard University graduate, created the world's largest social network today: Facebook.
At first, Zuckerberg created a portal called Facemash whose purpose was none other than to connect Harvard students with each other, in order to have a virtual place to share opinions about who were the most and least attractive people at the University, something that reached the University's management, leading to the student's expulsion.
However, his computer skills were so evident in that application that it did not take long for it to evolve and grow into what it is today: a social network with more than 2.5 billion active users per month.
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YouTube, an audiovisual phenomenon
A year later, YouTube, another of the world's most important social networks, was created by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawn Karim in San Bruno, California, and, according to legend, the idea for YouTube arose from the difficulties the three young men encountered in sharing a series of videos with their friends while they were at a party in San Francisco.
On 23 April 2005, the first video was uploaded to the network: "Me at the Zoo", and the network was such an incredible success that users from all over the world quickly began to upload videos of all kinds to the network.
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Twitter in 2006
In 2006, the social network Twitter was launched in San Francisco by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone and Evan Williams. It was initially called twttr and was a great revolution in communication.
Today, the impact of this network is such that even the media, such as television, radio and digital news media, devote entire spaces to talking about the impact that a tweet, trend or special mention has had on some news item of the moment. And, although it has its detractors, the truth is that many attribute its success to the simplicity of its use; the same use as in its origin: a limited number of characters that allow its users to communicate with each other. Today, the network has around 340 million active users per month.
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And then came WhatsApp
What today we can consider to be the most famous instant messaging app in the world was created in 2009 by the Ukrainian Jan Koum. It was originally created with the aim of being an intelligent diary and today it has more than 2 billion users, surpassing applications such as Facebook Messenger and Telegram.
In 2014, it was bought by Mark Zuckerberg for no less than 19 billion dollars.
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Instagram, the largest photo network
In 2010, Instagram was created by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger and became very popular in its first months of life, reaching more than 100 million active users in April 2012 and more than 300 million in 2014.
Today, it is still growing and growing, with over 1 billion active users.
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Twitch, the platform of reference for gamers
This platform reached its peak quite a few years after its creation, in 2020, with the pandemic, reaching more than 5 billion hours of viewing and increasing its number of streamers to 8.5 million.
Twitch currently has more than 140 million active users, who have led it to surpass the historic milestone of more than 6 billion hours of viewing, which has led it to take 72.3% of the video game streaming market.
Finally, it should be stressed that social networks have undoubtedly become an indispensable part of people's daily lives, and although we have mentioned many of the most important ones, there are hundreds more such as 21 Buttons, Tumblr, Peoople, House Party, ClubHouse, Patreon, Discord, Ivoox, and a long etcetera.
