How did social media rise and get so popular?
Social media is a tool to post updates on occurrences in your life, or to just post videos or photos of things you take an interest in. Social media is also a time killer. People may go on social media apps and watch short videos to kill time.
Social media has many purposes such as connecting with others, keeping up with the latest trends, shopping, staying up to date with celebrity news, viewing sports clips, and discovering new interests. How has social media gotten so popular?
The beginning of social media can be traced back to the time when the internet was still relatively new. The first social media platform, Six Degrees, enabled users to create profiles, make friends or connections, and send messages. While this program was a pioneering platform, it ceased to gain the traction it needed to keep on running and subsequently shut down in 2001. The turning point for these types of programs came with the launch of Friendster, launched in 2002, MySpace, launched in 2003, and LinkedIn, launched in 2003. These programs produced the groundwork for future programs.
The first program that revolutionized the social media grounds was Facebook, created by Mark Zuckerberg in 2004. Facebook rapidly gained popularity with college students. Facebook first gained traction at Harvard and began to expand to other universities after seeing the success it had. College students enjoyed this app because of the familiarity, easy navigating, and aesthetic. Facebook also gained popularity because marketing your business was a really good way to get your name out there. The design of Facebook’s marketing allowed for businesses to target a certain demographic based on user data.
The program that came out after Facebook is Youtube. Youtube has over 2.70 billion active users. The reason why Youtube is so popular is because it allows creators to post a variety of genres of content such as gaming, educational, kid’s content, and much more. Since release on January 15th, 2005, Youtube has been insanely popular, reeling in over two million video views per day. In January 2006, this number increased to over 25 million video views per day.
One of the other reasons why Youtube is so popular is because it is free to use. Youtube is a free to use program with ads, but if you want to go ad free you have to buy premium which costs $13.99 a month. Youtube also excels with its simplicity. Youtube makes it easy to upload videos to its server. It’s a simple process of recording a video and editing it. The editing part takes up most of the time.
If your channel can get 1,000 people to subscribe and 4,000 hours of public watchtime within a 12-month period or 10 million Youtube shorts views, you can apply to get monetized or get earnings from your videos. The idea of getting paid for creating content online and being able to watch any sort of content made Youtube an incredibly large platform.
One of the most rapidly growing platforms is TikTok. TikTok is a platform in which people can post short form content, usually around one minute long. The reason why TikTok has had a rapid incline is because of the global accessibility. TikTok also grew because of the trends it has been home to. The app brought dance trends, pranks, and other random trends that have resonated with the community. TikTok also has a section where people can sell and buy products. The main reason why it is so popular is because of the short form content without ads in the middle of a video.
I believe that the main reason why social media is so popular is because people want to show off or display their own experiences to get feedback from people online.
