Using Morsc code over the telegraph
If you dig into the past, social media has been around way before Facebook and X, in a simpler form but still allowing remote communication between people. It may have started with the 18th century telegraph invented by Henry, which at first just rang a bell at the other end of the line, but a few years later allowed Morsc to use it for sending messages in Morsc code, which metaphorically was the software the telegraph needed.
Interactive radio shows
Later came Bell’s Telephone in 1876 and almost two decades later, Radio was invented by Marcooni. In the 1930s stations began experimenting with “phone-in” segments to make broadcasts interactive – allowing listeners to call and talk. In Arthur Godfrey’s radio show (late 1940s) listeners were invited to call the station live on air, a revolutionary step at that time.
The birth of the digital age (and the virus Ed)
This is where things start to get interesting. CompuServe (1969), was an early online service that allowed large businesses to remotely access powerful computers to process data they couldn’t handle locally. A bit later in 1971, Ray Tomlinson sent the first-ever email, marking a milestone in digital communication. CompuServe later added email as a feature for its users, helping to popularize it among the public.
In 1978 came the first Bulletin Board System (BBS) developed by Christensen and Suess. These BBSs were accessible mostly to computer enthusiasts, who connected to it via a modem and telephone line. For them it was the gates to heaven, a place to share software, games, porno and discus computer related topics in discussion groups. This was also the era where computer viruses were developed and some of those Bulletin Boards, like the one by Todorov (alias name “Commander Tosh”) in 1990, were dedicated only to virus development, attracting programmers from all over Europe, one of them – “The Avenger“ who wrote one of the nastiest viruses for that time -“Ed”. These Bulletins were an underground scene, isolated islands of discussion, with little to no moderation, going undetected by law enforcement, they laid the foundations to online social interacting as we now know it.
Later came Usenet, which unlike a Bulletin Board System used a network of many computers around the world, for sharing messages with each other, allowing posts to propagate widely and creating a global discussion platform. This design allowed users from many locations to participate.
The first Email list management program was the LISTSERV, developed by Thomas in 1986. Imagine a world with no mailing lists…I wonder if you can 😛
Online chats
The concept of online chat existed before 1988, but IRC (Internet Relay Chat) which popularized real-time group chatting over the internet, was created in 1988 by Oikarinen. Before IRC, there were simpler chat systems on things like BBS I describes above or early networks, but IRC made group chatrooms and channels easy and scalable on the internet.
The birth of the World Wide Web
After the aforementioned developments, communicating via computers took a huge step forward with the invention of the World Wide Web (WWW) by Tim Berners-Lee. WWW allowed both interactivity and global accessibility to basically any computer user. In 1989, Berners-Lee proposed a way to link and share information using hypertext (the links that we click). He developed key technologies that are still the foundations that power the web today:
- HTML (to create pages like this one you’re reading),
- HTTP (communication protocol that allows your browser to “talk” to web servers and fetch webpages)
- URLs (address you use to find a specific webpage).
In 1991, he launched the first website, marking the start of the web as we know it. His work transformed the internet from a tool for scientists into a global platform for communication, information, and innovation.
Instant Messengers – ICQ and PalTalk
A few years later messengers were developed, the first real one was ICQ Released in 1996 by the Israeli company Mirabilis. ICQ introduced many features we now associate with messaging apps. Then came Paltalk by AVM Software (USA) which took it further with voice messaging, video chatrooms and group interactions. ICQ and Paltalk laid the foundation for today’s messaging apps like WhatsApp and Telegram.
The World Wide Web and messaging platforms gave us an amazing ability: to reach out to virtually anywhere on the globe and connect with new people we would otherwise never have had the chance to meet. Together, they helped shape how we communicate online, long before smartphones and modern apps existed. And think about it, that was only 35 years ago!
Modern social media
This was the start of an avalanche in social media development. 90s social media platforms like Classmates.com focused on reconnecting people with old school friends. SixDegrees.com introduced the concept of creating profiles and linking friends in a network, paving the way for later sites like Facebook. Together, these early sites laid the groundwork for the social media explosion that followed in the 2000s with Myspace (2003), Youtube (2005) and Twitter (2006).
Where do we go from here?
Social media has come a long way, but with its rapid development come new challenges, raising complex judicial and ethical questions that society must now confront along with dealing with the dark side of the web and social media. How do you see social media’s influence on modern living? Communicating? Socializing? The dark side?
Share your thoughts below!