This is the first lecture for my Intro to Social Media class at Loyola Marymount University. It provides a look back at the concepts that inspired today's social media phenomenon, as well as how these concepts evolved over the past 2000 years.

1. The (Brief) History of Social Media
January 22, 2013

2. Origins: Ancient Greece
• Original concepts of social media date
back to the famous philosophers of
Ancient Greece
• Rhetoric – the art of persuasion (one
to many)
• Dialectic – involves arriving at a
conclusion via a conversation &
exchange of ideas/viewpoints
(participation from both sides)

3. “One to Many” Concept
• Catholic church popularized the
“one to many” concept: the
word of God must be
communicated and interpreted
only through the church
– Council of Nicaea decided what
books would be included in the
Bible and how the Word would be
communicated to man
• Education/information reserved
for the clergy or the wealthy –
the masses were largely
uneducated

4. 500 AD – 1900s
• “One to Many” idea carried
through for hundreds of years
– Came up for debate during English
Reformation, King Henry VIII’s rule
• Martin Luther argued that the Bible
could be read and interpreted by man
– not just the church
– Rise of Communism, dictatorships,
state-controlled media
• Information came from one source;
government ruled by one
person/group

5. Technology: The Great Equalizer
• 20th Century: As technology
evolved, access to information
grew
• Computers and the Internet
deconstructed the “one to
many” precedent; created the
“many to many” paradigm
• Anyone now has access to
information that was once
reserved for governments,
universities, clergy or the
wealthy

6. Key Milestones
• First computer built: 1946
• First networked computers: 1968
• First home computer sold: 1977
• First online chat room: 1980
• Birth date of World Wide Web:
August 6, 1991
• First Internet Service Provider
(ISP): 1994

7. History of Social Media: 1989 - 2010

8. 1980s – 1990s
• Compuserve and Prodigy first large scale
attempts to bring an interactive, “social”
online experience to the masses
– High cost ($30/hour!) and low speeds
(dial-up)
• Internet Relay Chat (today’s IM) created
in August 1988
– Used during the first Gulf War
– AOL launches AIM in 1996
• P2P (peer to peer) sharing launches in
1999 with Napster; marked an radical
shift of distribution power from record
companies to the consumer

9. 2000s
• Most significant development:
broadband speeds rise & cost of
computers decreases
– By the end of 2000, more than 360
million had access to the Internet
(now: more than 2 billion)
• “Dot Com Bust” in 2001 refined
Internet business models; created a
more realistic view of the Web
– We learned what to build and how to
make money (advertising vs.
subscriptions)

10. Web 2.0
• The biggest evolution of the Web in the mid-2000s
• Web applications that facilitate interactive information
sharing, interoperability, and collaboration on the Internet
• Marks the rise of user-generated content and
democratization of information
• Power shifting to the people or “the many”

11. Rise of Social Networks
• Using the Internet to make and organize personal
& business connections
• The creation of the “social graph” – a person’s
sphere of influence and connections
• OpenID – a single sign-on for third-party websites
(Facebook Connect, Twitter OAuth, MySpaceID)
2002 2004 2005 2007

12. Real-Time & Location-Based
• From static pages to real-time streams of updates
• Smartphones enable mass adoption of location-
based services (“checking in” @ Starbucks)
– More on this in upcoming Privacy lecture
• GrouponNow offers instant deals by location
201120092006

13. Visual and Aspirational
• Evolution from utility to aesthetic – further up
Maslow’s Hierarchy
• Shift from need to want; functional to delightful
• Information as pictures; visualization of data
201020082007

14. The Social Media Revolution