The Rise of Social Networking Sites
It was an interconnected network of computers designed to survived an all out world spanning nuclear war.
These were huge mainframes and teletypes.
Then in the mid 70's the Heathkit Computer came out for home use.
Quickly technology caught the trend and IBM and Apple quickly gained entry to the market while spawning countless clones.
We can fast forward from there to the 80's and 90's and see the computer become ubiquitous to the American family.
The Internet is born with names like Prodigy, Compuserve, AOL, and the like.
They were independent networks sold on a subscription basis.
In and among all of this, there were also rudimentary bulletin board services you could dial into as well.
Fast forward again, and we move away from the networks and into the Internet proper.
Now the name of the game is information being provided on billions of web pages, Usenet, and ftp sites.
Soon the Internet becomes secure and we begin to interact more with commercial ventures as well.
Enter broadband.
High speed Internet changes the face of networking.
Suddenly the interaction between people became near real-time.
Instant Messengers, Forums, IRC, various chat forums, etc abound.
And, massive all-in-one social networks began to rise.
Here in the social networks you can be anyone, upload your photos and videos, write a blog, conduct polling,and most importantly interact with anyone else on the site.
This interaction has moved into the commercial sphere where virtually every product comes with a forum and a blog.
Then came the sites that allow you to record and blurb your visits.
The more people to see the ratings, visit the site, and add their own ratings, the better for the site.
Thanks to this and other technologies, the Internet is at last give and take instead of merely taking or viewing static sites remotely.
This brings us to today.
The new kid on the block is web 2.
0.
It is an amalgam of the old networks like Prodigy with the addition of mass emails (bulletins) and blogging.
It is also a marketers dream.
The proliferation of various social networking sites and the social rating site is changing the way people view the world wide web.
Simply viewing a page statically and then moving on is out.
Now we blog it, digg it, stumble it, and present it to our MySpace friends.
Pretty soon there are pages about pages about pages.
And if the original page cannot keep up, it will be consigned to Google's fiftieth page of results.
If you are going to succeed as a marketer, corporation, professional (fill in the blank), entertainment star, small business, or just a high school kid you will have to be plugged into the web 2.
0 optimized sites.
Your page on any of a dozen sites can be your calling card, resume, and direct line to the fans that are making you money.
IF you sell widgets, merely amassing a set of like minded friends creates an instant mailing list of widget fans.
As more sites become web 2.
0 optimised, your online presence will change again and be more relevant than ever.
It's time to take advantage of the opportunities and dive in.