Evolution of Social Networking

Social networking has come a long way since the time that it was first though of. Some of the basics of the original social networkers weren't considered social networkers at the time. Most of them were considered chatters. Social networking looks nothing like those early days. The evolution of social networking started in chat sites which started in the 1990's and began to take off at an unimaginable rate near the end of the 1990's. More and more people began to join one of the many chat sites that was popping up all over the internet.

People liked the chats because they could connect and instantly talk to people from around the world. Regular chat lines were in real time. The conversations were ongoing and people formed very strong friendships and bonds together. Some people became so caught up in the relationships that they made on the internet that they left their long time marriages to pursue new romances with someone they met online. That seems a bit drastic, especially knowing what we know today about internet safety, but at the time, we didn't know how deadly it could be. We have learned a lot from internet chats that started the entire social networking revolution.

Soon we began to see different types of chats such as Tribal.com which no longer exists. Their set up was a bit different because you could look up members to see who had been online and get information about people that you would like to chat with. That was more of a one on one type chat style. It was hugely popular but it ended abruptly which caused much surprise. You could even download MIDI music files. That was the only way to really listen to music on the internet at the time. They were short excerpts of songs or piano type music in replacement of the actual song.

Next came the ability to put a chat messenger on your computer. One of the most popular at the time was ICQ and hundreds of people flocked to them because it allowed you to have chosen friends only on it rather than everyone in the world being able interrupt your conversation. You could even have a chat room if you wanted several people involved in the conversation at once. Time progressed and so did the thing we now call social networking. More options were available, including the ability to upload pictures if you had a scanner. That all changed with the invention of the digital camera which made everything much easier and more fun. We were then introduced to the smartphone which made it even easier to take and upload pictures to a website.

Before we knew it, it was nearly two decades later and we had MySpace. MySpace changed the entire way that we looked at social networking. You could make your own website from the application, chat with friends and it didn't have to be in real time. You could even post messages on the message board if you chose to do so. Many people used the bulletins to take quizzes which could be fun. It didn't seem likely that another site would be able to overtake MySpace but then came FaceBook. FaceBook was a lot like MySpace. There were privacy issues with FaceBook but people seemed to like it better than MySpace and many people in fact deleted their MySpace accounts and joined FaceBook. Other things came along as well. For instance, there came a point where you could check in on your cell phone to let people know where you were at any given time. Though it isn't a safe practice, many people seemed to enjoy the idea of FourSquare and use it faithfully. FaceBook responded by adding FaceBook Places.

There are still original chat sites available for those who choose to talk in real time. TalkCity is one of those sites and it is going strong still today. Those who are old enough to remember the early days of social networking but only knew it as chats will remember fondly their attempts at keeping up with the conversations going on in the room they were in. It was an amazing time of discovery for many people who were amazed at the fact that you could actually talk to many people from around the country and around the world simply by logging in to a chat line on the computer. Those days allowed a much more involved way of connecting with new people and starting good relationships with those people. Today's social networking is nothing like that. It is rather disconnected from the people you leave status updates for, but it works for today's busier lifestyle. That is the evolution of social networking.