Creative ways to attract employers’ attention

It is very difficult to land a job these days. The competition is high and resumes (CVs) are no longer enough to reflect someone’s abilities to match a certain position. 
You need to work hard in a creative way in order to stand out in the crowd and find your way into an interview, or even better, to get a job offer.
That was what Graham Allgood exactly did to land himself an internship position with one of the biggest media and advertising companies in New York.
For starter, he was precise when he defined his goal; “The problem; how do I catch the attention of the largest and fastest growing media agency in the world?” he wrote on his blog telling the story. 
Obviously, to sell an idea to a company specializing in media and advertising, you need to do nothing other than speaking to them in the language they understood the best, marketing.
The next step was to choose the proper channel to attract their attention. In social media, specifically in Snapchat, he found the best possible way. 
“My solution was to market myself to the media agency by targeting them with my own ad campaign. I needed to match its brilliant progressive thinking and innovative content. 
“Running a creative campaign in a new media space would show the agency my skills in design, negotiating media space, and publishing attractive content,” he completed the story on his blog.
“I needed a platform where I could easily target the agency’s employees. Snapchat’s on demand geo-filter was the answer, it allowed me to publish my ad in a specific geographical space.”
Once he finished designing the geo-filter, he spent some time analyzing the best time to run it. He was following the company’s snapchat account and noticed that the account was usually active on Tuesdays. He purchased that slot from Snapchat, and ran the campaign during the working hours of the company.
Within hours, the media company reached him through Twitter with a thrilling tweet “Best thing we’ve seen in months! You rock man! Love the design.” 
Later that day, at 4 p.m., he received an e-mail from the director of social media at the company asking him for an interview the very next day. 
“To say I was excited about the response would be a huge understatement. During the interview, I was able to tell Monica all about the analytic results of my campaign. I had over a thousand views of the filter and my personal website views increased by 400 percent!” he blogged about it.
Although Allgood initially wrote on his blog that the company told him that all the summer internships were taken, it eventually offered him a paid summer social media internship, as reported by Mashable.
It is a story of dedication and creativity that landed an aspiring individual an amazing opportunity. And since reading about it, I wonder how many of us are thinking of doing the same, of going the last mile to reach our dreams, and even if some of us did, would he or she find a company that appreciate such initiatives?

Make your pics more adorable on Snapchat

A couple of new features are being launched on Snapchat, ensuring communication more adorable. The new set of features includes video/audio notes and calls, the ability to send multiple photos in a chat, stickers, and more.
Earlier, Snapchat rolled out the highly-anticipated update that introduced stickers to the platform. Now, you can add those same stickers to your snaps.
The sticker collection includes colorful sloths, walruses with thought bubbles like “TGIF” and “When’s lunch?” and “basic” cartoon avocados. 
There are also classic nods to Snapchat like kittens vomiting rainbows. Noticeably missing, though, is the platform’s signature ghost icon. 
There are now over 200 to choose from in private chat. To use, just tap the smiley face icon and you’ll see all the options. 
Alternatively, because scrolling through 200 could take some time — if you type a word like “love,” you can then tap the icon and it’ll bring up any stickers that could match it.
To add a sticker, go to the note icon where you’d normally find emoji, next to the text icon. Stickers work the same way as emoji, but cuter and more expressive. You can even pin them to moving objects in videos, creating the illusion that the stickers are floating in space.
If you’ll excuse us, we have to go download the update and make some pandas fly.
You’ll be able to initiate a chat simply by tapping the video or phone icons — the other person can ignore, join, or watch you. Even while you’re on a call, you’ll be able to send over images from your camera roll in case you want to show someone what you’re talking about. 
You’ll also have the ability to edit and send multiple photos in a chat and toggle back and forth between video, audio, and text during a conversation.

https://www.snapchat.com/download

Leadfeeder app helps boost your business on Facebook

Smart business leaders know how to use the ubiquity of Facebook to their advantage. In the B2B space, the journey from curious website visitor to converted customer is complex and rarely predictable. 
As buyers transition from sales-driven product education to self-service content discovery and become more guarded with their contact details, it isn’t always possible to capture e-mail addresses and use prospects’ inboxes as hubs for lead nurture messaging.
According to Mashable, today’s B2B marketers employ a litany of tactics to track prospects across devices and marketing channels, engaging with potentially interested parties wherever possible. 
With Leadfeeder, you can circumvent the need for lead capture and instead see a dynamic list of anonymous visitors to your website, along with intelligence on the companies they work for and logs of pages they click on. 
Now here’s where it gets interesting. 
Because the system integrates with your customer relationship management (CRM) and you can use it to export segmented lists of contacts, the B2B growth hackers out there can easily use Leadfeeder as en engine for creating hyper-targeted “Custom Audience” ads on Facebook.

Tips to get ahead on Instagram

Arabnews.
Here are tips for users who want to get ahead on Instagram:
Don’t overthink it: Don’t think about the likes. Just think about what you like. As with Instagram, so with life. Pleasing yourself makes you happier.
Post things that repeat in your life: With some people, it is their fancy accessories and manicures. With you, it might be your local bus stop.
Less polished images do better: People have rejected old theories regarding images and it is all about rawer, more mundane pictures now.
Show your B-side: Accountant by day, talented horticulturist by night, that kind of thing.
Get into “longer reads:” Clipped captions are out, paragraphs are in. 
Use the editing tools, not filters: Mess with the warmth and the shadows rather than relying on filters. It’s the way forward.
Start with a private account: And start following according to their hobbies. There’s Nasa for space geeks, chefs for foodies. There’s 400 million users, so someone is into what you’re into.

Bromoji: An emoji keyboard

Called Bromoji, this emoji keyboard features a large library of characters to use when texting that are made for the man. We all love using emojis, but many of the keyboard apps available are aimed at women. 
Bromoji is a must for when talking with the guys or even when responding back to your female friends. Emojis include food like pepperoni pizza and tacos, along with activities most men do. There are other fun ones like an emoji for golfing.
There is even a selection of faces, but the best ones are the emojis for popular sayings. Bromoji lets users send phrases like “Bro down,” “Dude, what happened last night?” and “Do you even bro?“
The emoji keyboard is simple to use. Once you download the app, go to Settings > General > Keyboard, tap on “keyboard” and add Bromoji as a new one. Open the app, select an emoji you want to use to have it copied to the clipboard and paste it in a text message.
Now you will be able to text your bros the way you would talk to them in real life. The app is available to download for iOS for $1.99.

Online platforms face hate speech complaints in France

(Arabnews)

THREE French anti-racism associations said they would file legal complaints against social networks Facebook, Twitter and YouTube for failing to remove “hateful” content posted on their platforms.
Two French groups say they have filed a suit against the three for allegedly failing to uphold requirements to delete content deemed racist and defending terrorism. They referred to a survey carried out between March 31 and May 10 by their members and those of a third association.
In this “first mass test of social networks,” the groups uncovered 586 instances of such content.
Only a fraction of these postings was deleted by the host organizations within a “reasonable time,” as required under a 2004 French law: Four percent on Twitter, seven percent on YouTube and 34 percent on Facebook.
“It’s a mystery whether moderating teams in social media are actually working,” said Sacha Reingewirtz, president of the UEJF. Dominique Sopo, head of SOS-Racisme, said the social media giants were hypocritical.
“Our legal step aims at getting the authorities to apply the law so that these organization submit to it in full.”
The suit has been filed under an article of the French legal code which requires a judge to issue a fast-track preliminary ruling in a complaint.
The ruling may be the first step in a full judgment in the case, which can take months or years.

Get running with ‘Couch to 5K’

(Arabnews)

FOR those who think it’s hard to consistently go to gym, it’s time to downloaded the “Couch to 5K” app, which is free (there’s a premium version, which probably doesn’t have as many annoying pop-ups).
The goal is simple: The $2.99 app wants to help you run your very first 5K. It doesn’t expect you do to it tomorrow or even next week. 
Instead, it builds a nine-week program of three-times-a-week 30-minute workouts to slowly build up to making the run. It’ll even help you find 5K events in your area. The app tells users an easy way to running by combining walking for a period of time with running and then walking again, and there’s a computerized “lady” there to tell you via your headphones what to do next. As things progress, there’s more running than walking until there isn’t any walking at all. 
The Zen Labs tech behind it is solid enough and you can jam to your tunes in between the “lady” tells you what’s what. It boggles the mind to think that users couldn’t just do themselves.

Microsoft aims to avoid Google’s mistakes

When Google introduced its Google Glass smartglasses four years ago, it turned to Glass-sporting skydivers buzzing a San Francisco convention center, Glass-adorned models at a glitzy fashion show and a Twitter campaign to notify early “Glass Explorers” of their luck in snagging a pair.

This year, when Microsoft showed off an early edition of its HoloLens augmented-reality goggles, it took the opposite approach: targeting the software developers it needs to make the device useful. No stunts. No fashion spreads. No consumer marketing at all.
The discreet launch reflects the daunting hurdles confronting the nascent industry of augmented reality, known in the industry as AR. Such devices overlay images as holograms onto a user’s real-life field of vision, with the goal of improving efficiency at businesses ranging from doctors’ offices to factory floors.
Some industry veterans see it as an even bigger opportunity than its cousin, virtual reality, which completely immerses users in an artificial world. But early efforts around augmented reality, including Google Glass and Microsoft’s own predecessor to HoloLens called Kinect, have sputtered.
“They’re taking a more measured approach with HoloLens, and it’s the right strategy,” said Tipatat Chennavasin, general partner at the Venture Reality Fund, which invests in augmented-reality and virtual-reality start-ups. “You don’t want to overhype it and get people very disappointed, and that’s what happened with Google Glass.”
The market research consultancy Digi-Capital predicts the AR industry could be worth $90 billion annually by 2020. That’s triple the projections for total sales in virtual reality.
Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Sony are among the many tech firms that are betting on augmented reality, virtual reality or both. The traditional methods of interacting with a computer — usually featuring a keyboard or a touch screen — will eventually seem quaint as these technologies proliferate, many in the industry believe.
“Microsoft has a huge opportunity here, that is: to create a market for holographic, mixed reality and to dominate it,” said J.P. Gownder, an analyst at Forrester Research. Success, he said, would mean selling hundreds of thousands of units by the end of 2017 to businesses.
But history suggests augmented and virtual reality still have along way to go.
Google announced last week a big virtual reality initiative, and players in the space ranging from start-up Leap Motion to smartphone maker HTC have generated plenty of buzz. But many of the promised products have yet to hit the market.
Augmented reality, meanwhile, seems destined at this stage for specialized niches in industries such as medicine and manufacturing. Google has shifted its focus too and no longer sells Glass to consumers, who found few useful things to do with the devices. Glass is still available to developers.
“It took Google a long way to evolve to a more substantive approach,” said Ian Shakil, chief executive of Augmedix, a San Francisco startup that recently raised $17 million for a smart-glass system for doctors that automatically records patient data.
The HoloLens traces its lineage to Kinect, an add-on for Microsoft’s Xbox gaming console that was introduced in 2010. Kinect turned user gestures into commands, and deployed sensors and cameras to map the rooms where it was set up, creating the foundation for a more immersive gaming experience.
Consumers liked Kinect, but it never lived up to its full potential, in part because it spawned no blockbuster games. Microsoft failed to persuade top gaming studios to invest seriously in Kinect, developers say, and by 2014 it was no longer being included with Xbox consoles.
But the Kinect technology found a second life in the HoloLens, which enables users to control holograms through finger bends in a motion called the “air tap.” Kinect developer Alex Kipman and much of his team also led the creation of HoloLens.
The new product, which sells in its developer version for $3,000, featured prominently at Microsoft’s recent software developers conference in San Francisco, with participants donning goggles to take a tour of Mars led by a hologram of astronaut Buzz Aldrin. They also played with the “air tap,” which controls a hologram’s movements much as a mouse manipulates icons on a computer screen.

Stop FB ruining your day with terrible memories

Stop FB ruining your day with terrible memories

Arab News:
If you had a Facebook account for a while, chances are, the hugely-successful social network has a few memories and photos you’d rather not see plastered across your News Feed. And the more times goes by, the more of such stuff the platform collects on you.
Facebook’s “On This Day” timehop feature pulls in past status updates, photos, posts from friends and other things you’ve shared or been tagged in — from one year ago, two years ago, and so on. 
The feature can help you to stroll down memory lane and fondly remember some of the times you’ve spent with friends and family. Unfortunately, it can also resurface some painful memories from your miserable past.
The platform does offer some customization tools, as well as the ability to turn off the feature altogether.
To switch-off “On This Day” completely, you’ll need to login to the Facebook website.
When your News Feed loads, click on “On This Day,” which is listed in the rundown of apps on the left-hand side of the screen.
When facebook.com/onthisday loads, you will be presented with a list of your social media memories. In the top right hand-corner, there is a button marked Notifications. Click this and chose the option marked Off.
You can not remove the app altogether. 
But at least the platform won’t pester you with cringe-inducing past statuses every time you login.
And if its just a few select memories you’re looking to avoid, you can customise the “On This Day” alerts from the same menu.
Tap the Preferences button, next to Notifications on the “On This Day page.” This presents you with two filters, which allow you to purge a particular date or person from your memories.
You don’t need to be friends with people to ditch them from the “On This Day” app, so you can easily get rid of people you’re no longer friends with.

App predicts emoji as you type

(Arab news)
Smart keyboard app maker SwiftKey is testing its latest app Swiftmoji — a predictive keyboard app that suggests emoji as you type.
Swiftmoji helps users find and type the appropriate emoji to text conversations. According to reports, the app has launched in a private beta test on Google Play. 
SwiftKey told TechCrunch recently that only a small number of people will be accepted into the beta.
This AI technology based app will understand the context of what you are typing and will update emoji suggestions as you continue.
Earlier this year, tech giant Microsoft shelled out about $250 million to acquire UK-based Swiftkey. It would appear that, in essence the deal would be redundant for Microsoft, which has its own keyboard app called Word Flow — albeit available only on Windows Phones. But Microsoft is interested in the predictive technology that powers the SwiftKey app. 
“This acquisition is a great example of Microsoft’s commitment to bringing its software and services to all platforms. We’ll continue to develop SwiftKey’s market-leading keyboard apps for Android and iOS as well as explore scenarios for the integration of the core technology across the breadth of our product and services portfolio. 
Moreover, SwiftKey’s predictive technology aligns with Microsoft’s investments and ambition to develop intelligent systems that can work more on the user’s behalf and under their control,” Harry Shum, executive vice president, Technology and Research at Microsoft, said in his blog at the time of the acquisition.

China Fakes 488 Million Social Media Posts a Year: Study

China’s government fabricates about 488 million social media comments a year -- nearly the same as one day of Twitter’s total global volume -- in a massive effort to distract its citizens from bad news and sensitive political debates, according to a study.

Three scholars led by Gary King, a political scientist at Harvard University who specializes in using quantitative data to analyze public policy, ran the first systematicstudy of China’s online propaganda workers, known as the Fifty Cent Party because they are popularly believed to be paid by the government 50 Chinese cents for every social media post.

Contrary to popular perception inside China, the Fifty Cent Party avoids engaging in debates with critics and doesn’t make fun of foreign governments. Instead, it mostly works to distract public attention away from hot topics by highlighting the positive, cheering the state, symbols of the regime, or the Communist Party’s revolutionary past.

"In retrospect, this makes a lot of sense -- stopping an argument is best done by distraction and changing the subject rather than more argument -- but this had previously been unknown,” King said in an e-mail.

Although those who post comments are often rumored to be ordinary citizens, the researchers were surprised to find that nearly all the posts were written by workers at government agencies including tax and human resource departments, and at courts. The researchers said they found no evidence that people were paid for the posts, adding the work was probably part of the employees’ job responsibilities. Fifty Cent Party is a derogatory term since it implies people are bought off cheaply.

About half of the positive messages appear on government websites, and the rest are injected into the 80 billion social media posts that enter China’s Internet. That means one of every 178 social media posts on China’s micro blogs is made up by the government, the researchers said. The sites affected include those run by Tencent Holdings Ltd., Sina Corp. and Baidu Inc.

The team based their findings on leaked archives of 2013 and 2014 e-mails from the Internet Propaganda Office of Zhanggong, a county-level district of nearly half a million people in Ganzhou City, in Jiangxi, a province in southeast China. The archive included a mix of multiple e-mail formats, programs and attachments that required King and his team to build customized computer code to crack the archive and deploy automated text analysis and extraction. 

They pulled out 2,341 e-mails of which more than half contained a Fifty Cent post, totaling 43,797 posts that formed a benchmark for identifying other propaganda posts. They were able to identify Fifty Centers by cross referencing names from leaked e-mails with online social media profiles.

They found the name, contact information, and even photographs of many of the authors but chose not to disclose them because it didn’t serve an academic purpose, they said.

The timing of the posts showed coordinated control. Typically, the Fifty Cent Party workers would go into action right after some kind of social unrest or protest and try to distract public opinion with a wave of social media that researchers said was “interesting, but innocuous and unrelated topic.”

For example, they found 1,100 posts touting the China Dream, local economic development following the July 2013 riots in Xinjiang, or pegged to senior politicians’ gatherings in Beijing.

“Many revolutionary martyrs fought bravely to create the blessed life we have today! Respect to these heroes,” read one post cited in the study.

People also criticized the West and drew favorable comparisons to China.

“On one hand, the US publicly asserts that if China does not perish the West will wither; on the other it tells the Chinese people: your government is problematic, you have to overthrow it so you can live better lives than you do today. I can ask, is there a more ridiculous and contradictory logic than this?” another poster wrote.

After analyzing the database they created from the leaked accounts, researchers used machine learning to find other Fifty Cent posts in other parts of China. Volunteers in China set up Weibo micro blog accounts to try to contact Fifty Centers to verify if they worked for the government.

“Of course, the difficulties of interpreting these answers is complicated by the fact that our survey respondents are conducting surreptitious operations on behalf of the Chinese government designed to fool users of social media into thinking that they are ordinary citizens,” the researchers said in their paper, “and we are asking them about this very activity.”

They researchers said they deduced the rules for the messages: First, don’t engage in controversial issues. Second, stop discussion about potential collective or street protests by active distraction. Allowing some dissent serves the purpose of letting the regime gauge public opinion on local leaders, they concluded, while complete censorship only serves to stir up anger.

“The main threat perceived by the Chinese regime in the modern era is not military attacks from foreign enemies but rather uprisings from their own people,” they said.

Revealing a paternalistic approach, the guiding policy of China’s Fifty Cent Party appears to be that distraction is better than conflict. “Letting an argument die, or changing the subject, usually works much better than picking an argument and getting someone’s back up (as new parents recognize fast),” they wrote.

The rise and fall of online platforms

It has been noticed that social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook are losing ground not only in the Kingdom but also in the whole region, and now we have the findings of a survey backed with statistics to prove this claim.

In a study by Northwestern University in Qatar and Doha Film Institute, it was found that “Facebook’s popularity has declined in the last three years by six percentage points, while Twitter has seen the biggest decline over the period, with usage down 17 percentage points,” as reported by the Gulf Business.

The study was conducted across many countries in the region including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia and the United Arab Emirates with 6,058 respondents taking place in the survey to reach that conclusion. 

The study looked into several categories like cultural attitudes, censorship, regulation and online surveillance, online and social media, film, TV, music, games, sports, news and children’s media. Although an expected decline, the reason behind it was a bit unexpected. I would have guessed that the increased number of trolls roaming the timeline in Twitter and jumping in each and every hashtag was the main reason Twitter is losing its ground in the local and Arab market, but the main reason the study brought to our attention was “growing privacy concerns.” 

More than 89 percent of Saudis who took part in the survey said that they were having many privacy concerns to the point that they decided to change the way they were using social media and engaging with its different platforms (I wonder if trolling is one of those privacy concerns!). 

The report about the study was not clear on the nature of the privacy concerns it cited, although it mentioned fears about corporate surveillance of their online activity (42 percent) than government surveillance (31percent).

There are many other findings the study has included in its analysis of the feedbacks it collected. For instance, and as expected, the video-centric platform, Snapchat, is now among the most popular platforms in the Gulf countries, while WhatsApp, the well-known instant messaging application, is also gaining popularity.

Moreover, more people are consuming their news online in comparison to print. 

“Daily newspaper readership is greatest in the UAE (25 percent) and Qatar (32 percent). Qatar also leads for reading news online daily (42 percent), along with Saudi Arabia (39 percent).”

When it comes to censorship, nationals of Egypt, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia believe that it is the responsibility of governments to block questionable content, while most of those in the UAE, Lebanon, and Tunisia believe it is the responsibility of the individual to control his or her online consumption. The conclusion put by the CEO of Doha Film Institute Fatma Al-Remaihi says it all. 

“The findings also highlight the tremendous potential for growth of new media channels, as Middle Eastern governments move their economies away from dependence on natural resources to developing knowledge-based economies, and media in particular is a priority sector.”

Start a chat by scanning profile codes

In a new update, FB Messenger, Facebook’s chat app, now has Messenger Codes — circular patterns around a user’s profile photo, which can be scanned to start a chat with that person. 

According to Mashable, Facebook also launched Messenger Links — short vanity URLs that lead to a user’s Messenger profile, in the form of “m.me/username.”

The news was announced by Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, who shared the Messenger Code of his dog, Beast, as well as Messenger lead David Marcus. 

If Messenger Codes sound familiar, that’s because Snapchat has had a similar feature since January 2015, called Snapcodes. 

For Facebook, however, the update might be about bringing businesses into Messenger. In a recent blog post, Facebook explained how the new features make it simple for users to find and start a conversation with a business. 

“Businesses can use Messenger Links and Messenger Codes in ads, on their website or in any other marketing channel to prompt people to reach out to them directly,” the post said. 

Businesses with Facebook Pages get a few additional options to make the conversation with customers smoother. Page usernames will soon start showing up on Pages (underneath the Page title). 

Pages also get Messenger Greetings, short text messages that appear in a new message thread before any messages are sent. Greetings can be set and edited in a Page’s Message Settings.

In a Facebook post, Marcus also shared that Messenger now has more than 900 million active users — not entirely surprising given that Facebook forces mobile users to chat through the Messenger app, but still a formidable number. There are also more than 1 billion messages sent every month between people on Messenger and Business and Pages, wrote Marcus.

How to Convert PDF, JPG File to MS Word or Excel

How to Convert PDF, JPG File to MS Word or Excel

Click the following link and then Upload your file and then convert to word, or excel.

Facebook Live Video Map Shows Global Broadcasts: This Week in Social Media

Facebook’s interactive map is the best way to discover live videos streaming in real-time.

introduced an “interactive map that shows you [public Facebook Live] streams that you can tune into in real-time” from all over the world and “who’s watching the video you’ve selected.” The Next Web reports that this new feature “has been around for the past month, but it’s now easier to find on Facebook’s desktop site.” The interactive map is rolling out slowly throughout the world, but there’s been no word on when it will be available globally.

Twitter announced that “advertisers who want to drive website clicks or conversions or mobile app installs can seamlessly extend their campaigns to Twitter’s audience of more than 800 million visitors – whether they’re on Twitter or engaging with thousands of mobile apps and websites.” By opening the Twitter Audience Platform to all advertisers worldwide, Twitter gave advertisers the ability to “reach a larger audience” and “easily measure [their] cross-device campaigns directly within [the] ads dashboard.” Twitter also rolled out “new creative formats to help direct response advertisers better connect with this influential, high-intent audience across both mobile and desktop.”

During work hours, no surfing, social media updates by court staff (India)

“If any staff member is found surfing internet, using WhatsApp or Facebook during working hours, suitable departmental action will be taken against him,” adds the circular.

A Delhi judge has cracked down on internet surfing and use of social media apps on phones by court staff during work hours, issuing directions to stop such activities or face “suitable” action.

“It has come to my notice that some staff members have been using mobile phones for
internet surfing, WhatsApp, Facebook updation during working hours. Mobile phones are to be used only in emergency to talk to family members during working hours and not for checking Facebook status/WhatsApp status during working hours,” states a circular issued by District and Sessions Judge (east), Talwant Singh.

“If any staff member is  found surfing internet, using WhatsApp or Facebook during working hours, suitable departmental action will be taken against him,” adds the circular.

Use of mobiles phones or other electronic gadgets inside courtrooms when proceedings are underway is banned. However, sources, said court staff are allowed to use phones during emergencies even during proceedings.

The circular has been sent to all judicial officers and administrative officers to “ensure strict compliance of the directions by their respective staff”.

Knowledge The World

Knowledge The World

How to Grow their Business on Social Media

2015 SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING INDUSTRY REPORT How Marketers Are Using Social Media to Grow Their Businesses

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Complete History of Social Media: Then And Now

Column form http://smallbiztrends.com/

nteracting with friends and family across long distances has been a concern of humans for centuries. As social animals, people have always relied on communication to strengthen their relationships. When face-to-face discussions are impossible or inconvenient, humans have dreamed up plenty of creative solutions. Avalaunch Media recently unveiled their Interactive Infographic entitled, “The Complete History of Social Media.”

History of Social Media: Then And Now

The roots of social media stretch far deeper than you might imagine. Although it seems like a new trend, sites like Facebook are the natural outcome of many centuries of social media development.

Social Media Before 1900

The earliest methods of communicating across great distances used written correspondence delivered by hand from one person to another. In other words, letters. The earliest form of postal service dates back to 550 B.C., and this primitive delivery system would become more widespread and streamlined in future centuries.

In 1792, the telegraph was invented. This allowed messages to be delivered over a long distance far faster than a horse and rider could carry them. Although telegraph messages were short, they were a revolutionary way to convey news and information.

Although no longer popular outside of drive-through banking, the pneumatic post, developed in 1865, created another way for letters to be delivered quickly between recipients. A pneumatic post utilizes underground pressurized air tubes to carry capsules from one area to another.

Two important discoveries happened in the last decade of the 1800s: The telephone in 1890 and the radio in 1891.

Both technologies are still in use today, although the modern versions are much more sophisticated than their predecessors. Telephone lines and radio signals enabled people to communicate across great distances instantaneously, something that mankind had never experienced before.

Social Media in the 20th Century

Technology began to change very rapidly in the 20th Century. After the first super computers were created in the 1940s, scientists and engineers began to develop ways to create networks between those computers, and this would later lead to the birth of the Internet.

The earliest forms of the Internet, such as CompuServe, were developed in the 1960s. Primitive forms of email were also developed during this time. By the 70s, networking technology had improved, and 1979’s UseNet allowed users to communicate through a virtual newsletter.

By the 1980s, home computers were becoming more common and social media was becoming more sophisticated. Internet relay chats, or IRCs, were first used in 1988 and continued to be popular well into the 1990’s.

The first recognizable social media site, Six Degrees, was created in 1997. It enabled users to upload a profile and make friends with other users. In 1999, the first blogging sites became popular, creating a social media sensation that’s still popular today.

Social Media Today

After the invention of blogging, social media began to explode in popularity. Sites like MySpace and LinkedIn gained prominence in the early 2000s, and sites like Photobucket and Flickr facilitated online photo sharing. YouTube came out in 2005, creating an entirely new way for people to communicate and share with each other across great distances.

By 2006, Facebook and Twitter both became available to users throughout the world. These sites remain some of the most popular social networks on the Internet. Other sites like Tumblr, Spotify, Foursquare and Pinterest began popping up to fill specific social networking niches.

Today, there is a tremendous variety of social networking sites, and many of them can be linked to allow cross-posting. This creates an environment where users can reach the maximum number of people without sacrificing the intimacy of person-to-person communication. We can only speculate about what the future of social networking may look in the next decade or even 100 years from now, but it seems clear that it will exist in some form for as long as humans are alive.