Studying the Evolution of Social Media to See its Future

I was a history minor in college - and, for awhile, it was my major. I am glad I was because the experience has framed how I view the development of the Internet and specifically online communities. (I have been online since 1988 when all we used were text-based online services.) 

We need to see where we've been to understand where we might be going. Webdesigner depot has a great post that takes us down memory lane with some thoughts on what's next. Remember, that there will always be hype in this space. Yahoo bought Geocities for $3.65B and now, about ten years later, they shut it down.

Comments

[Jay Deragon]

Good post. However Geocities was a walled garden whereas social media is open for creation by the masses. Social media is communications and if you graphed the rise in communications since the beginning of time history would paint a different picture. Those who forget the past a condemned to repeat it. The past shows that when communications shift everything changes and unless you shift you'll be left behind repeating what you've always done.

[Jason Scott]

The pre-1995 history in that article's pretty awful, frankly. The characterizations and analysis of what influenced what are hopelessly biased, and is obviously the work of someone who either "wasn't there", or was more focused on understanding what showed up when after 1999.