Before Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snap existed, SixDegrees.com was the first social media site in the internet's history.
Technological advancement has ushered our generation into a world where we utilize technology in everyday living. One of the most widely used tech sites we use nowadays is one where we can socialize and communicate with friends, family, loved ones, and even people from different parts of the world.
The surge of technological advancement in computing after the 1940s opened the stage for the modern-day world of social media.
In the 1960s, CompuServe was founded and began its existence on a relatively small scale, using locally organized computer networks. Later on, in its current form, the internet did not take very long to follow. In 1966, the first primitive emails were sent and received.
The decade of the 1970s saw considerable progress, culminating in the launch of Usenet in 1979. Usenet made it possible for people to connect through virtual newsletters, articles, or submissions to newsgroups, and slowly, socializing on the internet started happening more.
The Beginning of Social Media Apps
In 1985, both The Well and GENie were made available to the public for the first time. As reported by Interesting Engineering, the internet service that was developed for GE was known as GENie, which stands for the General Electric Network for Information Exchange.
This was a pivotal point in the development of social media, both in the context of business and in everyday life more broadly. GENie continued to be used up until the late 1990s, having been used for more than 15 years. It peaked at 350,000 users before the World Wide Web came along and made it useless, which led to its end.
In 1986, the first version of Listserv, which is not to be confused with any of the top 10 websites of today, was launched. The launch of this service might be completely normal in this generation, but back then, when Listserv was launched, it was a ground-breaking innovation.
This functioned similarly to a mailing list, enabling users to communicate with several recipients with a single email.
SixDegrees.com
In 1997, the first social media site, SixDegrees.com, was born. Users could send messages and post on the bulletin board to people they knew in the first, second, and third-degree, which is how the name came about.
SixDegrees.com, which would become the first well-known social media website, was established. Back then, they were allowed to communicate with one another and upload images of themselves for their profile on the website.
Users can also become friends with one another and broaden their social circles through the use of Six Degrees. In internet history, it is widely believed that Six Degrees was the very first social networking website.
In May of 1996, Andrew Weinreich laid the groundwork for what would later become the site that he would debut the following year. It was a one-stop-shop for popular features such as profiles, friends lists, and school affiliations.
Although the website had millions of registered users, network capacity was restricted because there were not enough people connected to the internet during the late 90s.
The internet infrastructure would need a few years to catch up with the idea of social networks before it could be implemented. In December of 2000, YouthStream Media Networks acquired ownership of the website. According to CBS News, the website was purchased for $125 million in 2000, shut down in 2001, and reopened a few years later.
