In today's blog let us discuss the differences between the social media of the past and the social media of the present.

In the current situation of covid 19, pandemic and the lockdown, people are increasingly getting homesick. But not in the traditional sense. We are now confined to our homes, with virtually no contact with the outside world, whereas the only contact that we do have being virtual. Social media has become our only constant companion right now, what with we depending on our phones for every single thing today, from ordering food to chatting with friends.

But, such a situation makes one think about what would have happened if social media was not invented in the first place. Today this very notion seems impossible and scary, but once, this was the reality. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say most people on this planet were first introduced to the concept of social media through Facebook. But, Facebook was not the first social networking site to be invented nor will it be the last.

SOCIAL MEDIA:

Social media is a phenomenon that comprises of multiple platforms where the user with an account can share images, videos, and texts to communicate and interact with other users. Examples of social media range from straightforward ones like Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp to innovations like Instagram and TikTok.

Literally, according to the National Encyclopedia, social media is defined as a communication channel that allows users to interact with each other.

Traditional media such as newspapers, news channels and radio stations were at that time the only aspects of mass communication available to the people. But the advent of social media changed all that by giving the mic to the common man. The common man, who until then was at the receiving end of information, was now the one who propagated information to the outside world. Social media liberated the people from what was then a one-way communication and ushered in an era of two or multi-way communication.

SOCIAL MEDIA THEN Vs. SOCIAL MEDIA NOW:

1. MySPACE vs. FACEBOOK: Before Facebook there was MySpace. MySpace was the social networking site before Facebook was invented. Users with registered accounts on MySpace could share their thoughts, experiences and trolls in the form of texts to the users that follow you. Even though Friendster was developed before Facebook, it did not achieve the same level of success that Facebook enjoyed. Even though Friendster gave users the opportunity to share pics and videos, Facebook was more user friendly and its unique tagging system made it much more popular. Facebook was much more innovative and aggressive in expanding its user base.
2. CHATROOMS vs. TWITTER: Chatrooms could be called the foremost group discussion platforms in the world. There a person with a registered account could just find rooms that discuss interesting topics and just enter them in the middle of the discussion. Trolls who were just as much a disturbance as they are now were the major disadvantage of the chatroom. But then came Twitter, which was a mix of chatroom plus social media plus news, where the user could follow the people with similar ideology and catch up on their thoughts. Even though Twitter restricted the number of characters to be used in a tweet, it also empowered the users to block the trolls. But in the current times, there is Reddit which is a variation of chatrooms of the past.
3. NAPSTER vs. YOUTUBE: Napster was the coolest thing on the market when it was released in the year 1999. It was one of its kind in its approach which allowed users to share music with others with similar taste in music. But the music industry sued Napster for helping people downloading copyrighted music for free, thereby closing it down. YouTube which came much later adopted this idea differently by allowing people only to stream music. By the time, Napster came back with a pay per download service, it was history and the people had already forgotten it.

The above-mentioned topics are just surface-level examples of what social media was like back then and the social media that we have now.

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