Publisher's Synopsis
Humans are known as the social animals, one of the primary need of human is to communicate and socialize with other fellow humans. The social networking between the human beings dates 100,000 years back. The historical pieces of evidence suggest that the early humans may have formed their own version of social networking. So how did the social networking version of today start existing? It's the advent of the internet in the early 1980's along with the mainstreaming of world wide web that provided us the ideal medium of social networking through social media. www - world wide web, a web in the true sense, with almost more than half of the population entangled in it. Some of the earlier social media platforms include Friendster, LinkedIn, MySpace, Orkut to name a few. Friendster launched in 2002, promoted the idea that people who have truly common bonds can lead to a truly enriched online experience. Unfortunately, after a fair share of technical glitches, Friendster suffered from a deep loss of fortune thus forcing it to abandon its social media platform and now is limited to just an online gaming site. Another social media platform LinkedIn launched just a year later in 2003, decided to take a serious and sober approach to the social media phenomenon. Unlike other social media platforms, LinkedIn decided to be a networking resource for business professionals looking forward to connecting with other professionals. In fact, Oracle's Chief Financial officer, Jeff E, was headhunted for his job via his LinkedIn profile. The popularity of this network can be determined from the statistics that suggest a new member joins LinkedIn every second. The major breakthrough of the social media can be considered the launch of Facebook in 2004. Considered initially as a college social website, it was later spread for public use. Today Facebook boasts of more than 500 million users. If Facebook was a country it would have been the third most populated country in the world. Mark Zukerberg's smart and innovative moves helped Facebook to mark supreme reign on the social media platform. The open API was a boon for all the third party app developers that helped them create apps that worked within Facebook itself. At one point in time, Facebook had so many apps that it created a Facebook store to display them all. Another reason for Facebook's success is the 'Like' button (now reactions) which broke free from the bounds of the site and started appearing all over the internet. Another popular social media platform, Twitter, was launched in 2006. It was a microblogging site similar to texting which has now grown into a platform for revolution. For brands, it is a PR tool, a customer service module, and a branding powerhouse. Today India is the third most tweeting country in the world. Another reason for the popularity of the social media can be dedicated to the growing popularity of smartphones, tablets etc. The handy accessory with all the features of the desktop has helped in adding the fuel to the ever-growing social media fire. Some social media platforms like Snapchat and Instagram are based entirely on mobile computing. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Instagram are among the top 5 social media platforms. There are more than 100 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices. Twitter gets more than 300,000 new users every day. YouTube receives more than 2 billion viewers per day. 7 out of 10 Internet users in India watch at least one video on YouTube daily The above statistics are the reason why businesses are diverting their marketing budgets from offline channels to online channels through Digital Marketing companies who are experts at Social Media Marketing services, Pay per click (PPC) marketing services and Search engine optimization(SEO) services.
