Week 2 Review

This week we were considering the origins and history of social media.  Groups worked together and produced posters of their findings.  I've posted them up here:

Well done guys!  We agreed that early social media started in the 1970's with email, bbs and forums.  It was very text based and looked quite difficult to use as computers didn't have graphic user interface that we are used to today.  At that time fewer people had pc's in the home and even fewer had internet access so the user base was much smaller.  It also tended to be technology 'geeks' :-)  As computers and internet services developed (and became more affordable) the number of users grew strongly and through the 1980's companies like Compuserve brought a better range of social media services to a larger number of people of all kinds.  The USA led the way with better networks, more users were able to connect to each other.  It still tended to attract groups with special interests like computer gamers.  In the 1990's things really took off with AOL ('the internet before the internet') and became more recognisable to us today.  It was much more interactive and media rich and many more users came on board to social media.

Today we have a very wide range of social media:  blogs, micro-blogs, social networking, social sharing, gaming, messaging and..........

We also access social media in different ways - using pc's, laptops, tablets and smart phones.

Social media is very important part of how people connect, share and interact with each other.  However, that's next week's lesson.