Social media started out extremely basic and with a focus on school, office networks and blogging back in the 90s, of course, they had “social media” throughout the centuries however it is not quite like it is today.
One of the first popular online social media sites was called “Six Degrees” back in 1997 however do not mistake this in thinking they were the only ones, technically you had other platforms even back in the early 90s but they were not quite social media platforms and were not specifically designed for connecting with friends, Six Degrees, however, allowed you to complete basic functions such as upload a profile, make friends with other members of the site, none of these platforms lasted and it wasn’t until early 2000s that we saw the birth of online social media with sites such as Friendster, Myspace, Facebook and even Twitter eventually in 2006, leading us here in 2020 with community-driven platforms like Uptrennd.com.
Issues With Being The First
Facebook was not the first to build a social network there were others and others which at the time were the big fish while FB was still learning to swim, you had platforms like Friendster, Second Life, Myspace being the three main platforms before “The Facebook” but in total there were over 50 different social networks of some kind between 1990 and 2004 from many different countries so it easy to see why only a handful made it through the DotCom bubble of 2000 however this bubble did not just include social media platforms but all online platforms as they say what goes up must come down and when that happens in a brand new market only those with a real product are left to keep building while everybody else fights to stay alive.
It took over 10 years for the DotCom market to reach its first peak, having a relatively slow start in the early 90s and most of the companies failing to produce anything viable it took some time for companies like Microsoft, Apple, Intel, Google, Amazon to become the big players they are today. Plenty of people became very wealthy in the DotCom peak of 2000 however if not more companies and people went bust! So this alone made it difficult for online companies to raise capital, to even be taken seriously by other industries at that time, regulatory issues, there were all sorts of hurdles DotCom companies would have to jump over to make it through the 2000s. As we approached 2004, a new digital age with advanced gaming, mobile phones, extremely higher bandwidth internet and technology was here, finally.
The New Social Standard
Between 2004 - 2010 the world started to become connected by the left click of a mouse, we loved that, We still do however something happened when companies like FB realised how addictive social media and the internet in general can be, this came at a cost to the people using these platforms like Facebook, Google, Twitter, Instagram who were all making billions, hundreds of billions every year from your personal data, either by targeting you with ads based off your search history or a few other methods like directly selling your personal information to third party companies.
As we started to move further into the digital age where your data wasn’t your own and companies had no obligation to protect or preserve it as they were basically non-existent and none of us really knew why it was important which enabled these companies to become giants in the corporate world, Facebook has more member accounts than any country on earth.
The rise of Twitter, Reddit, Instagram, Whatsapp, Linkedin and all these other alternatives which were not just for socially connecting with friends but for connecting with employers, potential clients allowing anybody with driven and a vision to create content to get noticed, it went from having some fun, posting to our friends to living this double life. In a way, like Elon Musk says we are already cyborgs as we have a digital self and constantly use our devices as an extended version of ourselves.
A Revolutionised Industry!
With the internet and social media progressing in the direction it did, this allowed for the everyday person to learn almost anything by the click of a search on google/youtube or a forum like Reddit, this blew wide opened the world of digital marketing/advertisement, no more did you have to run ads in your local/national paper or pay somebody to do your marketing for you.
To mention some names, Gary Vaynerchuk (Chairman of VaynerX, CEO of VaynerMedia, Vayner Subsidiary) he started out with email marketing back in the late 90s/early 2000s, was one of the first to use google ads too, this man has built a multi-hundred million dollar company in the advertisement/media world and is still in my opinion, the leading digital marketer on the planet.
We now see millions of content creators working on their own brand and telling their story regardless of wealth, following or knowledge, a time when anybody can be somebody.
A New Era In Social Media
Since the inception of bitcoin/blockchain, we have seen many solutions to our current problems around the world, one of them being decentralised, monetised social media which empowers the people which started with the steem blockchain & Steemit, they really did take social media to the next level.
Creating the potential for content creators to earn instantly without needing a publisher or a third party to pay them for their engagement or to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on ads online, now they earn on the spot with every like/upvote their content received at their own leisure. Steemits rise in being a new era in social media was short-lived due to fake accounts, upvote bots overrunning the platform and for some strange reason the team never addressing these issues or trying to prevent them, it is one thing to have a decentralised platform however if that platform provides no value for people then there is no use for it, unfortunately, the same capitalist concept followed over to Steemit meaning that those who already had plenty would easily get more but those who had to work their way up were more often than not overlooked, as always the first of anything is never the best version and since then we have seen quite a few alternative platforms.
Many members of the Steemit community over the last 16 months have recently abandoned Steemit for Uptrennd.com, especially since the hostile takeover from Justin Sun, Uptrennd has recently become the world's leading monetised blockchain-based social media platform on Alexa Rankings.
The Rise Of Uptrennd
The origins of this platform come from one man (Jeff Kirdeikis) and his “Cryptocurrency” Facebook group which just so happens to be the biggest in North America today called “Cryptocurrency Investing”. Starting out with humble beginnings, the name and logo were voted on by the CI group, Jeff decided that he wasn’t happy with the current stand of social media, feeling annoyed at Steemit and their misdirection, he felt it was about time a social media platform put the community first.
The beta launched Jan 1st 2019, since then they now have over 112,000 total members with zero paid marketing, Uptrennd started out with a very simplistic “reddit” feel but has since began their major UI overhaul on mobile/desktop, we should expect to see mobile apps this year also which will only increase their chances for mass adoption outside of the Cryptocurrency industry. The team behind Uptrennd really took the meaning of community focused projects to a whole new level where today on Uptrennd we see people thriving in their online passions while being able to financially benefit from the extra earnings made on their content all while still holding the reins of their content.
Conclusion
Since the early 1990s social media has come a long way however still has a challenging road ahead, the story doesn't really start until the DotCom bubble happened then not long after we saw sites like Friendster/Myspace/Facebook go online to eventually now have 6 major global platforms all providing their own take on social media by providing different styles, networks for you to enjoy.
Steemit then took this capitalist social media concept and gave it to the world however it once again came back to only a few having all the power so it sadly failed to deliver the people's social media, which was meant to empower the people.
Uptrennd has so far managed to succeed in empowering its community and distributing the wealth equally by putting the community first, upvotes are free to give out and so is signing up, upvotes/downvotes are what empowers the members by allowing them to curate the content on the popular/trending feeds. This gives a great sense of community governance where they decide what is acceptable and what is not.
Want to know more about Uptrennd?https://medium.com/@uptrennd/uptrennd-the-most-engaged-monetized-social-media-platform-in-the-world-7fd5eba14f2e
You can join the social media revolution today by following this link below, https://www.uptrennd.com/
