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Yes, social media has changed a lot in the last decade.
And the human impulse to communicate and also technological advancements have played vital roles here.
The story of social media is all about establishing along with nurturing personal connections at scale.
If we search for the definition of social media, we will find that they are basically the forms of electronic communication, like websites for microblogging and social networking that are being used for creating online communities, particularly for sharing ideas, information, and personal messages and other types of content pieces.
As per a report in 2019, around 72% of American adults use some form of social media. In 2005, after the launching of Facebook, that number of users was 5%.
A Brief History Of Social Media
Social media has completely evolved from direct electronic information exchange to a place for virtual gathering and retail platforms. There were times when we only used social media for communication purposes and for posting interesting content.
But standing, in 2022, social media platforms are majorly used for business and commercial purposes. Businesses are running different campaigns with their particular “hashtags.” If you are running a business and still have not utilized the potential of hashtags and social media marketing, you should start now.
The best part is that you also can check how your strategies are performing on different social media platforms using various tools and software. Although these tools might cost huge, you can get them for free from The Pirate Bay.
So, yes, social media has really changed a lot, and in order to understand its evolution, we first need to check the starting part of social media platforms.
Modern Social Media Outlets
At present, the social media landscape is crowded with a suite of services that jockey for the attention of over 5 billion mobile device users across the globe. Here we are with an overview of the most prominent social media networks of 2020.
It was launched in 2004 by a Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg, and we all know that quite well. As per the recent reports, it has around 1.7 billion users, which include 69% of the American adults.
In the year 2005, it was launched as a news-sharing platform. With 300 million users, now Reddit has transformed into a combination of news aggregation and social commentary sites. The main popularity of it is based on the ability to “down-vote” and “up-vote” user posts.
Twitter was launched as a microblogging site in 2006. By the year 2020, around 22% of American adults have become Twitter users.
Instagram came to the market as a photo-sharing site in the year 2010. Later in the year 2012, Facebook acquired it. Currently, it has over 1 billion users worldwide.
Ben Silbermann launched Pinterest in 2010 as a visual “pin board.” After 9 years, in 2019, Pinterest has become a publicly-traded company and has over 335active monthly users.
Snapchat
Snapchat, the video-sharing service, was the first to bring the concept of “stories” or serialized short videos to the market in 2011. We also can not forget about the attractive and interesting “filters” that are run for informative digital effects. Usually, they were based on location.
TikTok
TikTok is another video-sharing site that was launched in 2016. After its partnership with the popular U.S.-based mobile application Mucical.ly in 2018, this social media platform became really popular among American young adults and teens.
By the start of 2022, TikTok had over 800 million users across the globe.
The Evolution
In the earlier section, we get to know that all the social media platforms were launched to improve social connections across the globe.
However, with passing time, all these photo sharing, video sharing, and information sharing platforms started to play a serious role in educating more and more people. The best part is that sharing information has got a funny and interesting way.
Now, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and TikTik; all of these are also being used for marketing purposes. And we all can see the result. They are working really great now. Indeed, the evolution of social media platforms is huge and mind-blowing.
From attracting customers to making actual sales, from building brand loyalty to becoming big brands, social media is now helping businesses a lot.