History of Social Media + Impacts

History of Social Media + Impacts

Overview for this week:

In this week's lecture, we're going to go through:

The history and evolution of social media platforms.

Hey everyone, welcome to Week 8! This week, we’re blending two big ideas: the history of social media and how brands use storytelling to shape what we see, feel, and share online.

Implications

Case study on a current event in social media

We've had several discussions over what social media is to you... Here is a summary of the definitions you've given me:

Social media is the digital communication networks and platforms that support user-generated content and the exchange of messages, promoting and facilitates interaction among users. Social meida provides a number of novel interactions through text, image, video, and other media forms. It allows for novel interactions between common users and celebrities, influencers, and other interactions made possible by social media.

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Describing Social Media

• On social media, users can connect with audiences for products, services, or communities. Brands can engage their followers and grow their profile within their markets.
• Platforms are at risk for data breaches, thrusting personal privacy concerns in to the mix, along with the potential for disinformation spread.
• Social media has developed over time to place more focus on commercial business and collection of user data through interaction.

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Social Media Timeline

Early 2000's

In the early 2000's IRC Chatrooms and Bulletin-Style Message boards were popular. People used sites like : AOL Instant Messanger, LiveJournal (2001), Friendster (2002) MySpace (2003), and Club Penguin (for kids, 2005). MySpace was the most popular social media platform from 2005 to 2008.

• MySpace became the most visited social media site in 2006 & was widely popular for its account customization and ability to add music playlists to your account. MySpace was revolutionary for offering personalization & profile culture.

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Social Media Timeline

LinkedIn 2003

• LinkedIn had 10 million users by 2007. They introduced the Apply with LinkedIn feature in 2011, launched their new mobile app in 2015, and had over 500 million users by 2017.

LinkedIn started in 2003 as a social media platform for professional development (much like it's used today). It's been owned by Microsoft since 2015.

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Social Media Timeline

• Now, Facebook has transitioned into a space for connecting with larger communities, keeping up with friends and family, sharing posts, selling things, and posting videos. Though in recent years, Facebook has been under fire for massive data breaches and anti-competitive practices, affecting indivuals and businesses alike. It also has a declining popularity in younger generations.

Facebook

Facebook also started in 2003 at Harvard and spread though college campuses, first. It's still the third most visited website in the world, behind Google and Youtube. Facebook allowed way more customization and user autonomy, shoving MySpace to the side and taking over. People started posting their lives online, and it standardized “real identity” culture.

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Social Media Timeline

Youtube 2005

YouTube

Youtube started in 2005 and is the largest social video sharing platform, with 2.7 billion monthly visitors. It is the second most visited site, just behind Google.

Youtube 2025

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Social Media Timeline

Twitter

Reddit

Twitter appears in 2006, in a similar fashion with the rise of microblogging, and character-capped posts. Twitter used followers instead of friends, and offered a centralized news feed. Of course, Twitter was taken over in 2022 by Elon Musk, and is now called X. Other notable platforms: Tumbler (2007), Pinterest (2010), and Discord (2015)

Then, we have Reddit in 2005, where we see microblogging for the first time and voting-based views on posts.

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Social Media Timeline

Snapchat

Instagram

Instagram became popular in 2010, with image-based sharing with followers. Instagram shifted focus to visual storytelling and aesthetic. It started with people posting photos of their food and moments from their lives, but it's turned into a branding hub. Now, people use carousel-style image threads to tell stories of their day, week, month, brand, life, etc. It's treated like a curated gallery.

Snapchat appeared in 2011, offering short-term/ temporary communication and storytelling. We've also seen them try to branch outside of friends lists and introduce features like Discover Stories and Spotlight. For example, news outlets started releasing daily news segments on Snapchat to appeal to younger audiences, and we've even seen a Snapchat Monetization Program to encourage content creation. The general trend for Snapchat is that it's losing popularity.

Social Media Timeline

TikTok

TikTok, originally ByteDance (then, Music.ly), was created in 2016 and has been under major scrutiny over the last couple of years. In 2019, it became the most downloaded app globally. TikTok made short-form, authentic content king. While the influencer lifestyle was generally started through Youtube and video monetization, TikTok took off for influencers.

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Defining Key Turning Points

• These moments completely shifted online culture.
• The “Like” button taught us that engagement is measurable and addictive.
• Instagram gave everyone a personal brand.
• The Cambridge Analytica scandal reminded users and companies that data has power and that trust can be broken.
• Then TikTok reshaped how stories spread: fast, visual, community-driven.
• Each of these events redefined how users and brands operate online.

• 2009: Facebook introduced the “Like” button, which changed the game for engagement metrics
• 2010: Instagram's launch: Visual-first communication was pivotal

• 2020: TikTok surge: Algorithm-driven virality and content has paved the way for social media. TikTok's biggest perk? The FYP Algorithm.

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Social Media Platforms as Brands

Let’s flip the perspective for a second. Sure, we all use social media to build our "brands" online, but social media platforms are brands too. Each one has a distinct personality, mission, and culture that shapes how we use it.Each brand has its own ethics, community guidelines, do's and dont's, means of virality, and ways of shaping networks, and our content has to “fit” the brand of the platform to succeed. Each social media platform has a long (ish) history, shaping them to their current state of existence.

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Platform Branding & Audience Expectations

Every platform’s design and community shape what kind of “stories” succeed there.Think about it like dialects of the same language: if you post a LinkedIn-style infographic on TikTok, it will flop . It doesn’t match the platform’s “vibe.” Brands that understand this can adapt by staying consistent in their values, but flexible in their delivery.

Storytelling is the emotional bridge between business and audience. Storytelling changes platform to platform, and we'll never STOP changing the way we tell stories online. Each platform has its own “language.” You wouldn’t post a polished ad on TikTok the same way you would on LinkedIn. Adapting tone while staying consistent in values. That’s strategic branding. Always ask yourself: What does each platform’s audience expect from me?

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Content Guidelines = Brand Rules

• Going back to talking about platforms as brands themselves, each platform has a set mission, vision, tone, design, and community define their culture.
• Community guidelines, for example are meant to protect brands by enforcing content boundaries. Guidelines protect a platform’s reputation. They define acceptable behavior and tone, and violating them can lead to removal or bans.

• For example:

• YouTube restricts sensitive topics to keep advertisers happy.

• Instagram filters hate speech and explicit content to maintain a safe aesthetic.

• TikTok bans dangerous trends to preserve its fun, creative image.
• These aren’t random rules. They’re brand protection policies.

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Every Platform Has a “Crisis Moment”

Every major platform has faced a public controversy. Over the years, each platform has gone through an evolution of brand guideline shifts to accommodate users. We've seen things like inconsistent enforecement of community guidelines, arbitrary rules, guidelines impacting freedom of speech, or on the opposite side- allowing hate speech and harassment. We've also seen the implications of unmoderated content and its impacts on the rapid spread misinformation/ disinformation (and it's contributions to fake news). We've also seen extreme content moderation and factchecking. We've also seen impacts in data privacy, data breaching, lobbying within government, the rise of ad usage on social media, controversies monetization/ demonitziation, etc. Now, with AI, we're facing deepfake abilities and even more spread of misinformation/ disinformation. There are plenty of arguments for and against stricter community moderation. Controversy sparks backlash. Platforms are forced to adjust policies or branding. Users adapt (or migrate elsewhere). And the ecosystem keeps evolving.

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Ex: Controversial Moments in Social Media

Twitter/X verification chaos

• Before Musk: The blue checkmark = user was a public figure + their identity was confirmed.
• After Musk: After acquiring Twitter in 2022, Musk introduced a paid version of the blue checkmark through the Twitter Blue subscription service. It caused:

• Mass Impersonation: The paid system allowed anyone to get a blue checkmark. Many new accounts impersonating celebrities and major brands, including Eli Lilly.
• Misinformation and Confusion: Fake accounts rapidly spread misinformation, causing confusion among users and damaging the platform's reputation as reliable news.
• Loss of Legacy Verification: In April 2023, Twitter began revoking the "old" blue checkmarks from accounts verified under the previous criteria.
• Stephen King Controversy: Some public figures, like author Stephen King, reportedly kept their legacy checkmarks despite not paying, leading Musk to claim he was personally paying for them.

• Continued Evolution: The platform added gold and gray checkmarks for businesses and other accounts, further adding to the confusion for users

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Ex: Controversial Moments in Social Media

YouTube’s Adpocalypse

• The YouTube Adpocalypse refers to a series of events starting in 2017 when major advertisers pulled their ads from YouTube after discovering their ads were running alongside offensive or extremist content.
• This led YouTube to dramatically tighten its advertising policies, which in turn caused huge problems for creators who relied on ad revenue.
• A Wall Street Journal investigation found that YouTube was placing ads from major brands (like Pepsi, AT&T, and Johnson & Johnson) on videos containing hate speech, terrorism-related content, and extremist material.
• YouTube changed its monetization rules. Only “advertiser-friendly” videos could earn revenue. They introduced stricter community guidelines and content review systems. They increased automation through algorithms to identify “unsafe” videos. They also demonetized millions of videos.
• Many creators lost monetization/ ad revenue. Creators had to change how they told stories, avoiding controversial topics or words to stay monetized (“the algorithm-safe” approach).

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With each controversey, social media brands change they way they operate. While we shape our individual brands on social media, the social media brands themselves help shape us. Sometimes it's by what we stand for, certainly what's allowed, and most importainly how we do or don't use their platforms.

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Prefacing Your Assignment This Week

With that said, we're going to use this week to dive into the history of social media for a minute and think about how it shapes our branding. While your case study is going to be on a major historical moment in social media, I want you to think about a few things while you're doing it. Think about everything we’ve covered. Which moment in social media history do you think changed the digital world the most? Was it about technology, trust, or identity?

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Case Study Assignment

Your assignment this week is to research a historical event that changed social media.Explore what happened, who was involved, and why it mattered. Tie it back to branding, storytelling, and trust. You can write a 1000–1500-word essay or record a 5-minute video with slides. Cite at least five credible sources. You CANNOT choose the 2 examples I shared in this lecture, but there are PLENTY of other options to choose from. I listed examples in the resources section of this week's module.

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That's it for now!

Same time next week?

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Early 2000s

Here are examples of what MySpace and AOL looked like. Chatrooms for kids were also popular in the early 2000s. For example, Club Penguin was a social media platform where kids could interact as cartoon penguins in a virtual world, using chat and friend tools to connect and engage with others.