Reddit tumblr war11/26/2023 ![]() By connecting your personal network of trusted contacts (or “strong ties,” as sociologists call them) to others’ such networks (via “weak ties”), you could surface a larger network of trusted contacts. So many SNSes proliferated, a joke acronym arose: YASN, or “yet another social network.” These things were everywhere, like dandelions in springtime.Īs the original name suggested, social networking involved connecting, not publishing. But at the time, and for years, these offerings were framed as social networks or, more often, social-network services. ![]() They were built for creating and sharing “content,” a term that had previously meant “satisfied” when pronounced differently. Many of these sites framed themselves as a part of a “web 2.0” revolution in “user-generated content,” offering easy-to-use, easily adopted tools on websites and then mobile apps. But two decades ago, that term didn’t exist. Today, people refer to all of these services and more as “social media,” a name so familiar that it has ceased to bear meaning. In 2008, the Dutch media theorist Geert Lovink published a book about blogs and social networks whose title summarized their average reach: Zero Comments. Blogs (and bloglike services, such as Tumblr) raced alongside them, hosting “musings” seen by few and engaged by fewer. Flickr, the photo-sharing site, was one YouTube-once seen as Flickr for video-was another. You’ve probably never heard of some of these, but before Facebook was everywhere, many of these services were immensely popular.Ĭontent-sharing sites also acted as de facto social networks, allowing people to see material posted mostly by people they knew or knew of, rather than from across the entire world. Google Buzz and Google+ were born and then killed. Bebo launched in 2005 eventually both AOL and Amazon would own it. That year also saw the arrival of Orkut, made and operated by Google. Friendster arose from its ashes in 2002, followed by MySpace and LinkedIn the next year, then Hi5 and Facebook in 2004, the latter for students at select colleges and universities. It shut down soon after the dot-com crash of 2000-the world wasn’t ready yet. Six Degrees launched in 1997, named after a Pulitzer-nominated play based on a psychological experiment. The possible downfall of Facebook and Twitter (and others) is an opportunity-not to shift to some equivalent platform, but to embrace their ruination, something previously unthinkable.Ī long time ago, many social networks walked the Earth. And it’s a terrible idea that is entirely and completely bound up with the concept of social media itself: systems erected and used exclusively to deliver an endless stream of content.īut now, perhaps, it can also end. All at once, billions of people saw themselves as celebrities, pundits, and tastemakers.Ī global broadcast network where anyone can say anything to anyone else as often as possible, and where such people have come to think they deserve such a capacity, or even that withholding it amounts to censorship or suppression-that’s just a terrible idea from the outset. Instead of facilitating the modest use of existing connections-largely for offline life (to organize a birthday party, say)-social software turned those connections into a latent broadcast channel. The change was almost invisible, but it had enormous consequences. Slowly and without fanfare, around the end of the aughts, social media took its place. Social networking had its problems-collecting friends instead of, well, being friendly with them, for example-but they were modest compared with what followed. The shift began 20 years ago or so, when networked computers became sufficiently ubiquitous that people began using them to build and manage relationships. The practice evolved via a weird mutation, one so subtle that it was difficult to spot happening in the moment. Perhaps we can find some relief: Social media was never a natural way to work, play, and socialize, though it did become second nature. Now that we’ve washed up on this unexpected shore, we can look back at the shipwreck that left us here with fresh eyes. It’s never felt more plausible that the age of social media might end-and soon. Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter has caused advertisers to pull spending and power users to shun the platform (or at least to tweet a lot about doing so). Mark Zuckerberg’s empire has lost hundreds of billions of dollars in value and laid off 11,000 people, with its ad business in peril and its metaverse fantasy in irons. ![]() Facebook is in decline, Twitter in chaos. This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, Monday through Friday.
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