2 Recent Age Group Trends

As the tools and technology available in the social media world changes, so does its use. With the growing popularity of Facebook and Twitter in the early 2000’s, younger internet users appear to be exchanging “macro-blogging,” with pages of text for “microblogging,” with status updates and tweets;^ ^14% of online teens in 2010 blog compared with 28% in 2006.^26^ Additionally, for young adult users (ages 18-29), only 15% of internet users blog compared with 24% in 2007.^26^ However, the prevalence of blogging remains steady among adult internet users.^26^

^ ^Overall, both teen and adult use of social networking sites has risen significantly in recent years. However, there are shifts and drops in the proportions of teens using various aspects of social media. 73% of online American teens in 2010 use social networking websites, an increase from 55% in 2006.^26^  47% of online adults use social networking sites, up from 37% in 2008.^26^ A smaller proportion of online teens in mid-2009 were sending SMS messages than in early 2008.^26^ 

 The age distribution of users on Twitter is somewhat unique. Although teens are the in the lead in terms of proportional usage of other social media, Twitter appears to be the exception. Approximately one-third of online young adults (ages 18-29) use twitter.^26^ 19% of adult internet uses use Twitter or other similar services. ^26^ Only 8% of teens use Twitter.^26^ Older teens are more likely to use Twitter than younger teens; 10% of ages 14-17 do compared with 5% of ages 12-13.^26^ 

3 History

3.1 The 1970’s - 1980’s 

The 1970’s and 1980’s were a developmental period for the World Wide Web. From the actual creation of the web, to the count of pages on internet growing from a couple hundred to thousands of webpages. This was a critical period for the development of social media because as the use of the internet spread, so increased the number of potential users of social media.

- **BBS**- The first social media like software was the Bulletin Board System also known as BBS. The BBS system was created in 1978 for sharing information between friends. The user connected through a dial up modem. The user could create groups, share files, and post messages for other users. The first BBS system was created by Ward Christen in 1978.^1^ BBS has all but died out completely today. BBS is sometimes considered one of the precursor’s to the modern day world wide web.

- **AOL** - In 1985 the AOL service opened.^2^ AOL which means America Online became one of the largest internet groups of its time. In its prime it reach over 30 million users by the year 2000.  In 1898 Elwood Edwards records, “Welcome”, “You’ve got mail”, “File’s done”, and “Goodbye.” for the iconic AOL mail suite.^3^ In 1998 AOL bought the ICQ messenger service^4^ to add to its already established chat services.

3.2 The 1990’s

The 1990’s are responsible for the web we now know. What was established in the 70’s and 80’s was further built on to create the tools, such as HTML protocols, needed to create  and lay the framework for the social media sites we have today.

- HTML - In 1990 the HTML protocol was developed.^5^ The HTML allows for a user to upload graphics and create hyperlinks. This is a crucial advancement for social media as it allows the user to now share pictures and embedded links. HTML has become one of the primary languages of the internet. It has advanced to the current version of HTML 5 which allows for even more advanced inbrowser actions such as the Canvas feature^6^ which allows for drawing inside a java script box.

- **AOL messenger** - AOL Messenger, or AIM which was big for the time. It began May 1997 and was only to be used by patrons 13 and older. This was the cornerstone and the breaking point of instant messaging. Later competitors included Yahoo! Messenger and MSN messenger as well.^7^ In the era of AOL messenger went with the era of dial-up internet. Both of these today are seemingly obsolete but were the first big changes to the internet that we use daily today. Moving from a software download as AOL messenger to a website wildly used by many is the shift social media began to take towards the turn of the century. This was at a time when the internet was used more widely and being accepted as a standard for everyone as a tool that was obviously not going to phase out as was previously thought. 

- **Blackboard** - Blackboard the website was erected in 1997 and was the joining of ideas between Courseinfo LLC and Blackboard LLC. Originally the Blackboard LLC company was a consulting firm and Courseinfo was used to manage, as its name states, course information . The blackboard that we use daily today was formed in 1998 and no longer offers course info but is a platform for teacher and student interaction. (Gilfus) Today Blackboard.com is used by almost every College or University and is a staple in the communication between student and instructors. As technology matures in universities blackboard updates as well; the categories and the interfacing capabilities improve and are updated constantly.^8^

- Blogger - The popular blog website Blogger was created in august of 1999 by Pyra labs.^9^ It was started as a free blogging site where anyone could create a blog. Since its creation in 1999 it has become extremely popular.  Blogger was ranked number 16 in the top 50 domains in 2007 based on web traffic. In 2003 Pyra labs was bought out by the internet search company Google Inc.^10^

-**Forums/Message Boards** - Forums took flight on the world wide web in the early 1990s. Similar to BBS or Usenet, forums are one of the primary reasons that the internet is so vast. The software was first created in 1994 which supported forum protocol and was developed by the W3 Consortium. Unlike BBS however, forums are still very popular with software packages still in the hundreds including Invision, vBulletin, MyBB and others.^30^

3.3 The early 2000’s

During the early have of the 2000’s is when things really got going. The entire framework that had been put down in the last 30 years spawned some of the most popular social media sites, such as Facebook and Myspace. This created the world of social media as we know it now.

- LinkedIn - LinkedIn is a social media site started around the business environment. Founded by Ried Hoffman, Allen Blue, and Konstantin Guericke, Eric Ly, and Jean-Luc Vaillant, It was launched May 5th, 2003. ^11^ It was designed for business professionals to share their occupation and backgrounds. Users can upload photos, create contacts, upload and share resumes. Employers can post jobs and view candidates, and Job Seekers can search for jobs.  It currently has over 200 million users in over 200 different countries. It remains a popular social network in the professional world.

- Skype - Skype was started in 2003 and was founded by Niklas Zennsran and JanusFriis. 31 It is currently owned by an investor group, Sliver Lake which includes eBay inc. Skype features Skype calls, video calls instant messages and voice conferencing, this feature was introduced in 2006. In 2008 Skype began to focus on video call connecting people all over the world in real time introducing a personalized form of social media and communication. ^32^ As of 2012 Skype had 31 Million users worldwide and acquired revenue of 406 million dollars in 2010. Skype  was recently purchased by Microsoft for 8.5 Billion dollars. ^32 ^With over 100 million Skype users and over 100 million minutes of calls and videos logged every month. Skype’s popularity has rapidly grown in the past 4 years. One of the newest features to enhance the experience of Skype calls is the ability to record video calls with people all across the world. ^33^

-Myspace - The perfect example of how ever-changing technology and its relevance is Myspace. It grew from seemingly nothing into what was a phenomenon. In its pre-facebook hay day Myspace added about 200,000 new users a day.^12^ It was the first wildly successful social networking site of its kind, and engaged all groups of people, young and old; people of all races all over the world flocked to make, change, update, friend, and add music to their myspace pages. From 2005 to 2006 the Myspace website grew from having 2 million profiles to an exponential 80 million profiles.^12^

-Facebook - Facebook is a social media website created by Mark Zuckerberg on February 4th 2004.^13^ Facebook is a social media site which allows user to share profiles, status updates, photos, links, and videos with friends or public. It also allows users to search, add and chat with friends. Users can also create and like pages. It has applications such as games like Farmville. The website originally started as the website www.thefacebook.com and it was designed for the campus students at Harvard. It eventually expanded to other colleges such as Yale and Stanford. Just 6 days after going live Zuckerberg was accused by classmates for stealing ideas to create thefacebook.com. In 2005, Facebook bought the domain name facebook.com and opened the website to more college students.^14^ Eventually all college students, then anyone could create a Facebook page. Facebook has grown to become the largest and most popular social networking site today. It has become so popular that the United States president, President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney used it as a part of their 2012 presidential campaigns. Facebook currently has over 1 billion users worldwide and still counting. ^27^

3.4 ^ ^The mid 2000’s to present day

The overall rise in the use of SNSs (social networking services) regardless of age shows that the organization of the public online community is growing to be more people-focused than it was in the past.

-Youtube -Youtube was launched in February of 2005 by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karin. Users could upload, view, and comment on videos.  In 2006 Google made a deal to buy Youtube which had by then become a rapidly growing online video website. It is the next step for Google and now Youtube has more than 110 million monthly viewers. Summer of 2009 Youtube announced the merge with Vevo music to launch music videos and in 2010 they started adding movie rentals with Netflix and apple.^15^

-Twitter -Twitter was started in 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Even Williams and Biz Stone.^16^ It was an effort to find a new way to send texts from cellphones. On March 21 of 2006 the first tweet was sent which read “just setting up my twttr”.^16^ The dictionary definition of twitter is “to utter a succession of small, tremulous sounds, as a bird.”^17^ The definition is largely represented of what happens on twitter. Twitter allows the user to share “tweets”, or posts of information. It has become extremely popular with businesses as it allows for fast news updates to its customers. Twitter has become one of the most popular social networking sites with over 500 million tweets per day and growing.^18^ Twitter recently introduced the Vine feature which allows users to tweet short video clips.

-Craigslist - Craigslist is a classified listing website and has over 450 cities and spread across 50 countries. Founded by Craig Newmark, he wanted to create a social site of interest and then Craigslist was formed by word of mouth. It is a money making company, but has become a social community. Today craigslist serves over 9 million views per month and one of the most viewed website. It has become the best source for data on local exchange and a seeker of goods. The CEO Jim Buckmaster has told Global Media that Craiglist has no interest in maximizing profit, but in 2004 the biggest auction giants Ebay had purchased a 25 percent of the company and viewers are concerned. We will have to see what the future brings for Craigslist.^19^

-Google Buzz -Google Buzz was a social networking site which integrated into Google’s gmail service. It launched on February 9th of 2010 by Google Inc. ^21^ It allowed the user to chat, share photos and files, share status messages and links between friends or publicly. Google Buzz never took off and never became popular. It was not able to compete with the already established and popular facebook social network.  In October of 2011 Google announced shutting down the Buzz service. On December 15th 2011 Google Buzz had gone away. ^22^

-Pinterest – Pinterest was created by a man named Ben Silbermann in March of 2010.^29^ It is a social networking site and application that acts as a virtual pin board that links its user’s through common interests that are pinned to their virtual wall. The most popular use of Pinterest is to help plan weddings although it is used for other things that extend from animals to dinner recipes.^29^ Although it got off to a very slow start, by June of 2011 it had over 20 million users and today it has over 27 million users.^28\ 29^

-Instagram -  Instagram, a photo-sharing application, had over 10,000 users within hours of founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger opening the app at the Apple App Store on October 6, 2010.^20^ The founders focused on building a mobile-only experience through Instagram that is about producing photos on the go, in the real world, in real time. This inspired a user’s creativity while they captured everyday moments through the Lens of the mobile phone.^20^

- Google Plus - Google+ also known as G+, was launched in June 2011 by Google Inc.  It allows the user to create circles with friends, share photos and posts, like apps on the Google play store, and chat with friends. Google+ is one of the many “layers” of the Google environment.  Google+ is rapidly being adopted worldwide and has been a much better attempt at competing with facebook than its processor, Google Buzz. Google+ has become 2nd to facebook as the most popular social network. It took the 2nd place lead from twitter in the 4th quarter of 2012. More than 500 million people have joined Google+ and has 135 million active stream users each month as of December 2012. ^23^

 - **So.cl** - So.cl, pronounced as social, is one of the newest social networks as of February 2013. It was official released May 20th of 2012 by Microsoft Corp..^24^ So.cl allows users to post messages and picture collages, post videos, post links,  and follow other users or interests. Users can comment on others posts and collages with text but can also use visual comments called rifts which link another collage of graphics related to the topic.^25^ In order to sign up you must be 18 years or older. You can sign in to So.cl with your windows live ID or your facebook account. It is still too soon to tell if So.cl will be a popular well known social media site in the future

 **-Smartphones and Social Media-** Up until the late 1990’s, there was a very defined line between cell phone communication and computers. The two devices simply did not cross over in terms of social media outlets. Cell phones were used for talking and computers were used for all other means of communication such as chatting, emailing, et cetera. In the early 2000’s however, Ericsson hit the market with the R380 phone. It was this phone that was coined by the company as a “smartphone.” This phone operated on the Symbian operating system which until the emergence of the Android operating system in the latter 2000’s, remained the primary system used by cell phones with internet and other “smartphone” capabilities.  It was with this technology that linked phones and computers as one, enabling users to connect using various forms of social media simultaneously. Uploading photos to Instagram and then posting to Facebook, checking email and even surfing the web has become an everyday routine for many. Smartphones’ entrance into technology has not only placed social media outlets at the touch of a fingertip, but has made it so incredibly easy to add new outlets every day. Guaranteed that for all social media wants and needs, “there’s an ‘app’ for that.”^34^

4 References