Digital Marketing Agency in Ontario

We tend to think of Facebook, or maybe Myspace, as launching “social media” into the mainstream.And from there the social network was a fully formed concept that we’ve all used for the last 10-15 years to stay in touch with friends and make new connections.To swim in the feed of content.

Every day.In reality, we owe the modern social network to several small innovations along the way, going back to the mid 1990s.Myspace and Facebook did a lot to define the modern social network.But what social platforms look like today was a huge collaboration.

They were the first to have profile pages and the ability for profile to connect with one another, aka “Friends.”1999 – Updates, Followers, Groups (Livejournal)With LiveJournal we see the beginning of what would ultimately become “the feed” of content.

Both asynchronous following (where I can follow you with you having to confirm or follow me back) and groups.2002 – Friend Discoverability, Profile Comments (Friendster)Friendster was the first to allow profile comments and made it easier to find and connect with more people.2003 – Profile Privacy (Hi5)We won’t see many privacy innovations on this list, but Hi5 was the first to allow you to have a public profile or restrict your profile only to your friends.2003 – First Business Social Network (LinkedIn)You might not realize it but LinkedIn is the oldest modern social network.

Founded before Myspace even.2003 – Scale (MySpace)MySpace did not bring a lot of new features that I would call innovations.

Later in 2006 they became the most popular website in the world at the time, with 75 million+ unique visitors each month.2004 – The Wall (Facebook)When Facebook launched, many of their innovations were not apart of their original success.