Define That Feed
This kind of site is organized around profiles and relationships among people, not just around posts.
What is a social network (or social network site)?
These two researchers created the first virtual community discussed in lecture.
Who are Dr. Murray Turoff and Dr. S. Roxanne Hiltz?
Launched in 1997 by Andrew Weinreich, this is called the first true social network site.
What is Six Degrees (Six Degrees Social Engine)?
Launched in 2003 by Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson, it was the most visited website in the world from 2005 to 2008.
What is Myspace?
Jack Dorsey’s first post on this service was on March 21, 2006.
What is Twitter?
This broader term covers tools people use to create, publish, and circulate content — blogs, video, photos, and more.
What is social media?
Established in 1978 and funded by the NSF, this system’s purpose was to develop computer conferencing.
What is EIES (Electronic Information Exchange System)?
Six Degrees was inspired by this social scientist’s “small world” study: anyone is tied to anyone else through six or fewer relationships.
Who is Stanley Milgram?
Myspace let users personalize pages with these two web languages.
What are HTML and CSS?
The first video uploaded here, April 23, 2005, was co-founder Jawed Karim’s 18-second clip “Me at the zoo.”
What is YouTube?
Beyond sharing information, shopping, and entertainment, social media is also used for this kind of personal work — how people present who they are online.
What is identity construction?
This 1978 text-based system let two or more computers talk through modems and telephone lines and was a primary online community until the 1990s.
What is CBBS (Computer Bulletin Board System)?
Created in 2001 by Adrian Scott, this was the first digital social network for business professionals and a precursor to LinkedIn.
What is Ryze?
This blurry, flash-heavy, bathroom-mirror self-shot helped popularize the selfie and became associated with Myspace.
What is the Myspace Pic / Selfie?
Facebook bought this SMS-replacement chat app in 2014 for about $19 billion — still Meta’s largest acquisition.
What is WhatsApp?
Six Degrees, Friendster, and LinkedIn belong in this bucket; Justin Hall’s diary and The Daily Dish belong in this other bucket.
What are social network sites and (early) social media / blogs?
He is credited as inventor of the World Wide Web; his program Enquire stored information in linked files, creating hypertext (HTML), and he founded the W3 Consortium in 1995.
Who is Tim Berners-Lee?
Launched in 2002 by Jonathan Abrams, it connected people through “friends of friends” and was the first social networking site to reach 1 million members.
What is Friendster?
Originally launched as “TheFacebook” for students at this university, it later opened to other colleges, high schools, and anyone 13+.
What is Harvard?
ByteDance launched Douyin in China in 2016 and this international app in 2017; Musical.ly was folded in in 2018.
What is TikTok?
A platform can be both a social network and social media; this 2004 Harvard site is the lecture’s clearest example.
What is Facebook (TheFacebook)?
In 1994 he put the first blog on the Web: a personal diary called Justin’s Links from the Underground at www.links.net.
Who is Justin Hall?
Founded in 2003 by Reid Hoffman and co-founders, it is an online professional résumé and networking platform that ties people through work, education, and professional organizations.
What is LinkedIn?
By this month and year, Facebook had surpassed Myspace in unique visitors.
What is April 2008?
Founded at Stanford in 2011, this app started as Picaboo: photos and videos that disappear after they are viewed. Stories arrived in 2013 and became the model others copied.
What is Snapchat?