Social Media - In the Beginning

In order to take a look at where we are now, with a growing number of visual social media sites, I believe it is a good idea to look at where we’ve been. What sites came first and what worked for them? How were they used by the public in their infancy? This article will take a look at the beginnings of social media, focusing on Friendster, MySpace and Facebook and looking at how these websites were used by members and by advertisers.

First, what is social media? According to Michael Hirschorn, it is “web applications that allow individuals to create their own pages-filled with postings, photos, video, and portable applications generally called “widgets” – and interact with other users (150). Today, this definition could encompass many websites that are used for various purposes. Many sites use the sharing aspect and interaction that social media brought to us.

What was the original purpose of social media? According to Katheryn Andresen, “the concept of a social media network was originally developed as a simple application allowing “members” to join for free.” Although not the first, MySpace was launched in 2003, giving its users the capability to create a page that was customizable with text, photos, and graphics (293). MySpace originated as a site to compete with Friendster and other social media sites and gained its initial popularity with indie rock bands using it as a tool to get their music to fans (Walker, 2). MySpace gave many uses for their services in the beginning, such as, to meet friends’ friends, share photos/video, keep in touch with family, hang out with friends, and meet new people (Walker, 2). Today, with a quick visit to MySpace.com, it becomes obvious that they have since updated their website services, focusing more on connecting its users to music and other media like television and film.

Before MySpace however, there was Friendster, which launched in 2002. Friendster described itself as, “an online community that connects people through networks of friends for dating or making new friends” (Rosenheck, 12). Friendster was originally designed as a dating site to compete with Match.com; the social media aspect was just an added bonus (Boyd, 1279). Sounds like any social media website that we’d be familiar with today. However, if you would stumble upon this site today, you’d find a different model than what the site was when it launched. Friendster has become a gaming site where you can play games with friends or others online, using an avatar rather than your actual photo.

In 2004, Facebook launched their website which, at the time, was for college students only, and originally only Harvard students. Since launch, Facebook has opened up their services to high school students in 2005 and then to anyone in 2006. Although it doesn’t appear on Facebook’s timeline page, before opening up to everyone, Facebook was available for companies to network, like they originally did for schools. Unlike MySpace and Friendster, it appears as though Facebook hasn’t changed their premise; although they have added many new features since inception. The site was founded by a then 23 year old Mark Zuckerberg, who was a student at Harvard; this project was originally meant to digitize the freshman year “facebook” (Hirschorn, 148).

So why did MySpace change when Facebook has only evolved? Mark Sullivan describes a few points to why, in 2007, Facebook had increasingly become a more dominate social medium. These points are highlighted below.

• MySpace users receive junk messages/friend requests from random bands/comedians. Increased promotion gives the impression that your page is not “your space”
• MySpace was easily customizable with added images/colors/personalized parts, but the results were generally visually unattractive with cluttered pages and competing background/texts
• Facebook’s interface is clean with block presentation, neat lines and white space, appearing more adult and less chaotic
• Facebook offers various applications (blogging tools, media players, sticky notes) that are easily added/deleted to your page to personalize the page to fit your needs
• Facebook allows users to look up their high school/college/company to find others in that network that they may know (32)

Hirschorn discusses a major difference in MySpace and Facebook, in the beginning. MySpace, because of the interface, was prone to more spammers or unwanted marketers. Facebook on the other hand, made it much more difficult to spam because of the preexisting networks that used to exist. In the beginning a user had to have a specific email address to belong to certain networks, making users much more difficult to find (150,152). Although social media websites are free, “the concept of profitability [comes] though advertising revenue based on the number of subscribers” (Andresen, 293-294). With a specific target audience it became possible for advertisers to display relevant advertisements to the users. The business/marketing aspects of social media will be discussed further in other articles.

Sources

• Andresen, Katheryn. “Marketing Through Social Networks: Business Consideration – From Brand to Privacy.” William Mitchell Law Review 38.1 (2011): 290-327. Web. 30 October 2012.
• Boyd, Danah. ”Friendster and Publicly Articulated Social Networking”. Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems April 24-29 2004 Vienna, Austria. 1279-1282. New York, 2004. Web. 14 November 2012.
• Hirschorn, Michael. “About Facebook.” The Atlantic Monthly 300.3 (2007): 148, 150,152,154- 155. Web. 14 November 2012.
• Rosenheck, Dan. “Will You be My Friendster?” New Statesman 16.768 (2003): 12. Web. 11 November 2012.
• Sullivan, Mark. “Is Facebook the new MySpace?” PC World 25.10 (2007):32. Web. 11 November 2012.
• Walker, Aaron, et al. “Social Networking Sites: A Short History.” (2007).