History of social networks: how they were born and what was their evolution

The arrival of the Internet, some years ago, generated a before and after in different civilizations, especially because it opened the way to a new way of communication between users who did not necessarily need to be in the same room . For example, with email, web pages or forums. The interaction between people began to gain, little by little, more and more strength, eliminating -among other things- a large number of cultural or language borders.

And, how could it be otherwise, within the previous scenario, social networks also arose, whose success lies fundamentally in the possibility that they offer users to communicate with others, in a completely immediate way, through virtual spaces, no matter where they are on the planet.

The history of social networks: how and when they were born

The beginnings

To begin with, we must remember the birth of the Internet, back in 1947, when the Cold War gave its first steps, pitting citizens from end to end of the world; some western and capitalist (led by the United States), and other eastern and communist (led by, then, the Soviet Union).

A true battle for power that led to numerous technological advances. Among them, the US created the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), which -a decade later- established the pillars of what would be known as the Internet, since its ARPANET network allowed the exchange of information between institutions.

Thanks to this, with the passage of time, users from different parts of the world began to be in contact thanks to emails (the first being sent in 1971) or Project Gutenberg (Free Online Library), in 1971. A few years later, in 1991, the global Internet network went public, with the World Wide Web (what we commonly know as "www"), and thus the Internet was born.

What was the first social network? Six Degrees (1997)

Six Degrees

But what was going on back then? That, despite all these advances, there was still no element, tool or application that allowed users to socialize with each other, beyond exchanging emails or online chat programs, such as IRC.

This changed in 1997, when SixDegrees was created, which can be considered the first social network in the world; a network that allowed to locate other members of the network and create lists of friends, and that was based on the theory of the six degrees of separation, which states that it is possible to connect with any other person in the world in just 6 steps.

As Andrew Weinreich, its creator, explained on the day of its release: “The challenge is to build a community, the challenge is to ignite a flame. This is a service that they can use to make their lives more efficient. But, like buying an address book, if you don't add names to it, it's useless."

The application, basically a network that linked acquaintances with "acquaintances of acquaintances", can be considered a failed network in commercial terms, but it is undeniable that it laid the foundations of what we know today as Social Networks. The app closed in 2001.

The arrival of Friendster, MySpace and LinkedIn (2002/2003)

In 2001, as we said, SixDegrees disappeared, but it only took a few more months for the then lucky digital users to start enjoying of new social networks, such as Friendster, which was created in 2002 as a social network for video game lovers, or MySpace and LinkedIn, which appeared in 2003, being considered much more professional and business-oriented networks. Old social networks, many of which have disappeared… although not all.

Above all, LinkedIn, whose impact on the business world was immediate, reaching, in 2008, more than 25 million registered users, extending to companies in 150 different sectors. Today, it has more than 600 million registered users.

User profile on MySpace

The appearance of the social network par excellence: Facebook (2004)

And, how could it be otherwise, in 2004, a young university student from Harvard University placed the icing on the cake , and created the most important social network, currently, in the world: Facebook. That young student -who today we could easily classify as a "nerd"- is known as Mark Zuckerberg.

The story of Zuckerberg and how he created Facebook is exciting: Zuckerberg created, at that time, a portal called Facemash whose purpose was none other than to be able to connect Harvard students with each other, to have -thus- a virtual place to share opinions about who were the most and least attractive people at the University; something that reached the Directorate of the same, generating the expulsion of the student.

However, his computer skills were so clearly seen with that application, that it didn't take long to evolve and grow to what it is today; a social network that already has more than 2,500 million active users per month.

YouTube: the audiovisual phenomenon (2005)

Only a year later, in 2005, a new revolution emerged, which today remains one of the most important social networks: YouTube. A network created by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawn Karim in San Bruno, California. According to the legend, the idea of ​​YouTube arose from the difficulties that the 3 young people found to share a series of videos with their friends, while they were at a party in San Francisco.

On April 23, 2005, the first video was uploaded to the web: «Me at the Zoo«, which we show you below:

The bombing of this network was such that users from all over the world quickly began to upload videos of all kinds to the network, slightly losing the original idea of ​​it. But, nevertheless, the traffic shot up even more when users began to place YouTube links on their MySpace pages. Today, the network has close to 2,000 million active users per month.

The beginning of 140-character messages: Twitter (2006)

In 2006, the social network emerged in San Francisco, led by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone and Evan Williams. of microblogging: Twitter, which was initially called twttr, to later evolve to the current name. It was, without a doubt, the communication revolution. The “short burst of inconsequential information”, or the trill of a bird, which, in English, is said to tweet.

Today, the impact of this network is such that even the media, such as television, radio and digital news outlets, dedicate entire spaces to talking about the impact that a tweet, trend or special mention has had on any news item of the moment. And, despite the fact that it has some detractors, the truth is that many attribute its success to the simplicity of its use; the same use as in its origin: that of a limited number of characters that allow its users to communicate with each other. Today, the network has about 340 million active users per month.

WhatsApp (2009)

What we can now consider the most famous instant messaging app emerged in 2009, and was created by the Ukrainian Jan Koum. It was originally created with the purpose of being an intelligent agenda -hence, it is linked to the contact agenda of our mobile terminal-, allowing the user to see what each person was doing at any given time, in order to know whether or not I could start a conversation with him. Hence, its name: WhatsApp ("What's up?", "What's up?")

Today, it exceeds 2,000 million users, being above applications such as Facebook Messenger or Telegram. In 2014, it was bought by Mark Zuckerberg -the creator of Facebook- for nothing more and nothing less than 19,000 million dollars.

Instagram: the largest photography network (2010)

In 2010, Instagram hit the market, quickly positioning itself as the most photographic social network par excellence, with greater success than other options such as Flickr. Instagram was created by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, and the particularity that it had in its beginnings (which is maintained today) is that it treated its images and photographs in a square shape, in honor of the Kodak Instamatic as well as the Polaroid cameras, contrasting with the more vertical aspect ratio that most of the cameras in mobile terminals have today.

In addition, it was the pioneer network, together with Twitter, in the popularization of hashtags, back in January 2011, seeking to make it easier for users to discover the photos that other users shared on the same subject, and that they could not to be visualized in another way.

Instagram achieved great popularity in its first months of life, reaching more than 100 million active users in April 2012 (just two years later), and more than 300 in 2014. Today, it is still growing more and more -around 1,000 million active users-, especially since it is a social network focused on the new generations, who sin so much of being 24/7 showing their contacts what they are doing, in the form of photographs placed in their feed or in their Stories (a format that is defined by making public content that disappears after 24 hours, in which Snapchat was a pioneer, and, some time later, it reached Instagram and Facebook).

Precisely, this measure, that of launching their own stories, was key in the fate of Snapchat, the social network that at the time was on everyone's lips as the most booming worldwide, and which ended up languishing largely part of the world, overshadowed by the power of Instagram.

Pinterest and Google+ (2010/2011)

From then on, each year new social networks emerged with different functionalities or aimed at different groups. Pinterest, for example, a social network that collects images -above all, inspirational- that allows users to store them on boards and provide them with "pins", was created in 2010 and, 9 months after its launch, it already had 10,000 users. The network has more than 300 million monthly active users.

For its part, Google+ was the great failed attempt of the online giant: it emerged in 2011, it was a social network owned by Google, which reached 10 million users just two weeks after its launch. After 3 weeks of operation, it was already around 20 million. A network that made great efforts to challenge others such as Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Vimeo or Tumblr, but which -unfortunately- closed its doors in April of this year.

Twitch, the reference platform for gamers (2011)

Twitch arrived in the social networking sector in 2011, and from the beginning it set trends due to its focus on the growing market of gaming. Justin Kan, Emmett Shear, Michael Seibel and Kyle Vogt, its creators, had previously experimented with a live video platform, Justin.tv (2007). This, in principle, was a kind of reality show about Kan's life, where he documented his daily routine with a camera that he wore on his cap. However, since it did not have such an audience, its creators decided to open it to the public in October of the same year, arousing great interest in the Internet community.

The platform quickly began to gain followers and a particular community was created in it, within which gamers maintained a certain importance. As a result of the impact they saw in this gaming community, and the growing market that it raised, the four friends decided to launch Twitch as a by-product of Justin.tv.

In the following two years, Twitch strengthened its presence in the sector, and raised 35 million dollars in two rounds of investment, around 29 million euros. Raising the interest of large companies such as Google and Amazon, to finally be bought by the latter in September 2014 for 970 million dollars, close to 800 million euros. From this purchase onwards, the platform continued to grow gradually and expand its repertoire, incorporating a royalty-free music library, new categories and including new broadcasts. Finally, for 2020, it presented a considerable boost due to the pandemic, reaching more than 5,000 million hours of viewing and increasing its streamer staff to 8.5 million.

By the beginning of this year, the platform managed to reach the largest number of live views for a direct, this among all video platforms. This was achieved by TheGrefg, a Spanish gamer who, with the presentation of his own fortnite skin, managed to amass more than 2.4 million live viewers. Twitch currently has more than 140 million active users. Those who have led it to surpass the historical milestone of more than 6,000 million hours of viewing, which has led it to take over 72.3% of the video game streaming market.

…And more, and more modern

Over time, the innovations that are reinvented in social networks are unique and make each application focus on a different theme, covering more and more every day. and more social aspects. 21Buttons, Vinted or Wallapop, for example, are social networks that allow the buying and selling of second-hand clothing and products, directly contacting some users with others, without any kind of intermediary between them.

People, for its part, allows you to group collections of recommendations, such as restaurants in Vienna, Top plans in Madrid or the best decoration stores, among many other combinations. A network widely used by influencers looking to share their most valuable secrets with their community of followers. And, for their part, others such as Tinder, Meetic, Grindr or Badoo, focus on contacting users who are looking to flirt.

TikTok, the last to arrive (2016)

For its part, Tik Tok, which emerged at the end of 2016, -also known as Douyin in China- is a social network with a great pull among teenagers today.

TikTok, which Musically bought in 2018, is a social network that could be compared to a cross between Vine and Snapchat, with which you can create shares and discover very short videos, ranging from 15 seconds long to a maximum one minute. Videos in which young users can do practically anything and later edit with the powerful tools that the app has.

And, of course, there are many more that we have not been able to develop, but that you have surely used more than once. And, is that, there are so many and so varied that we would never finish this article (For example: do you know Likee, the Singaporean clone of TikTok?) . However, we have highlighted the most popular in our country.

Other countries have their own specificities: China, for example, with QZone, Baidu Tieba and Sina Weibo or Russia, with Odnoklassniki or Vkontakte add up to hundreds of millions of users on networks that are completely unknown to us.

Current state of social networks in Spain for this 2021

Social networks have undoubtedly become an indispensable part of people's daily lives. According to the 2021 Social Network Study carried out by IAB Spain and Elogia, 85% of Internet users in Spain interact on these communication and entertainment networks. As we can see, social networks have a high penetration in Spanish society, although it has shown a slight decrease compared to last year.

According to the study, the main audience of these platforms is users between 25 and 40 years old (35%), revealing that most of these are within the university and working community. Likewise, and maintaining agreement with previous studies, women dominate the landscape of social networks with 51% of the users studied.

On the other hand, for this new edition IAB Spain and Elogia have disincorporated some social networks whose relevance has diminished considerably, such as: 21 Buttons, Tumblr, Peoople, House Party and Byte. Likewise, new participants were accommodated, given the growth of the social media sector in recent times, including the following platforms: Stereo, ClubHouse, OnlyFans, Patreon, Discord and Ivoox. Despite this, the use of social networks has not suffered a great variation with WhatsApp, Facebook and YouTube as the undisputed leaders. Although the latter two have been in decline.

In this same order, platforms such as Instagram, Telegram, TikTok, Pinterest and Twitch have shown significant growth. Especially highlighting Twitch on the frequency and intensity of use, since it maintains an estimate of use of 1 hour 40 minutes, compared to this year's average of 1 hour 21 minutes. These indices show the boom in demand for video content, which has increased the use of platforms such as Instagram, Tik Tok and Twitch.

This same boom goes hand in hand with the growing presence of social eCommerce and social marketing, which use social networks as a means to reach their audience. In this way, 45% of Spaniards affirm that social networks have influenced them when making a purchase. Taking Instagram as the leading social network in this regard, thanks to its primarily visual impact and its tools dedicated to creators and stores.

However, if you know of another that you want to share some interesting or relevant information about, don't forget to leave it to us in the comments... and let us all learn something new!

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