June 30: World Social Media Day
Our way of communicating has gone revolutionary from telephone to fax machine and now to social media.
Social Media is one of the tech world’s biggest developments of recent times.
World Social Media Day was launched by Mashable on June 30, 2010.
It was born as a way to recognize social media’s impact on global communication and to bring the world together to celebrate it.
The first social media platform ever to be launched was Sixdegrees in 1997. Founded by Andrew Weinreich, the website allowed users to list friends and family members and had features such as profiles, bulletin boards, and school affiliations. At its peak, Sixdegrees had over a million users but it was eventually shut down in 2001.
The first modern social media platform was Friendster in 2002. The website allows people to safely make new friends and has over a hundred million users, most of whom are in Asia.
LinkedIn, the first business-focused social media platform was launched in 2003. MySpace launched in 2004, the same year as Facebook, but initially, it saw much greater success than Mark Zuckerberg’s creation.
By 2006 MySpace was the largest social media platform in the world, with users loving the customized profiles that also enabled them to post their music.
YouTube launched its website dedicated to video in 2005 and Twitter followed with its limited characters platform in 2006. As both grew in popularity, so did Facebook, and the most popular social media platforms for the next five years were being established.
Instagram launched in 2010 and saw rapid growth, gaining over a million users within the first couple of months. With Instagram challenging their dominance, Facebook purchased the platform for $1 billion in 2012. Facebook also purchased the encrypted messaging platform WhatsApp for $16 billion in 2014.
One platform that Facebook failed to buy was Snapchat. Snapchat, which became popular due to its disappearing stories feature, was launched in 2011 and reportedly turned down a $3 billion offer from Facebook in 2013.
The most recent addition to the list of social media heavyweights is TikTok. The app was launched in 2016 and has become incredibly popular due to its extensive music and video editing features.
WORLD SOCIAL MEDIA DAY TRADITIONS
There’s one main tradition that is observed on Social Media Day and that is, of course, posting about it on social media. Who’d have thought it? Many people upload photos or stories that reflect the role that social media has played in their lives.
Others choose to repost their favorite uploads from the past and generally it is a chance for people to share some love online.
While others uses SM Day as an opportunity to compile lists of some of their favorite social media moments. If you have a spare 20 minutes or so it is well worth your time to find some of these lists and enjoy some of the funniest, most viral social media posts knocking around.
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