Every day, people watch over a billion videos on YouTube, and Instagram is adding 52 new images per second. And every second, social networks see 2 new users sign up.
The Internet and Social Media is a part of our daily lives, but it wasn’t always like this. Facebook has only been around for 9 years, and “googling” wasn’t a thing until Google launched in 1998. Even email has only been a possibility for just over 30 years.
So where did it all start?
Interestingly, the “Internet” started as a research tool for the U.S. military. Originally called Arpanet, it was designed to connect just four computers at university research labs to aid information sharing and transfer. At the time, gas cost just $0.35 a gallon, the first man landed on the moon, and Woodstock happened.
Fifteen years later, in 1984, the “Internet” as we know it was born when the network had expanded to include 1000 hosts at various campuses and corporations.
This fantastic infograph from the folks at WhoIsHostingThis? takes us for a walk down memory lane. Check out how Internet traffic and usage has grown, when key social networks got started, and how the mobile landscape is changing the social media game completely.
Where were you when some of these landmark events took place? I built my first website in 1994, which puts it within the first 100,000 websites born. While I joined MySpace and LinkedIn soon after they first launched, I didn’t join Facebook until 2007. How about you?