History 300 Dr. Kauff 1/15/50 Leading into 2050, social networking sites developed into multi-faceted mediums for human communication and became the primary source of interpersonal communication. Beginning in the 2000’s with Myspace and Facebook, the social networking craze slumped in the 20’s with sites like iamprobablybeingstalked.com. The 30’s continued the downward trend with wowzersitiseasytocommunicate.com, and now sites have emerged like boomcommunication.net and ilookatallyourpictures.com. The debate rages on about whether they will comeback in the coming years. Originally, Myspace and Facebook were designed to allow easy, quick communication as well as picture and video sharing among friends. Myspace blazed the trails for future social networking sites, providing a way for simple, everyday people to find Internet fame. Tom never stood a chance. Soon, Facebook took over as the most popular way to look deep into people’s personal history via photos. But, in 2016, Facebook faded, along with the first generation of social networking. After people lost all interest whatsoever in social networking, companies stopped advertising and Facebook became an abandoned site. However, Facebook was able to revolutionize social networking, and the site is remembered for the outstanding “creepability” that stemmed from it. People of the world seemed to like the stalking allowed by Facebook, so founder Mark Zuckerberg released his second social networking site, ilookatallyourpictures.com, currently the most popular social networking site since 2016, with a grand total of 15 members. While that is nothing compared to the millions that once used Facebook, it is a staggering amount since the 2020 Internet crash and the hysteria that followed. After Facebook, Twitter was the new vogue and it brought with it a new style–one of short, simple communications called “tweets.” Twitter is what people would use when they thought people cared about them. Many celebrities used it as a way to attract attention to themselves, much as today’s politicians use boomcommunication.net to communicate with the masses. Tweets are nearly impossible to read. For example, this tweet on New Year’s Eve of 2009: “sup boyz I be hittin da club hard like I be hittin my bag fo punchin in da monin fo realz yo. ladiez hit me up fo a fun time $$$.” Scholars have been dedicated to finding the real meaning of this post. The closest theory they presented states that it was a desperate attempt to attract a female mate by a severely challenged young man. The next site to come along was numbersthenewcommunication.com. This site simply used number based communication. It seems complicated and nearly unreadable, and it was, which is why it lasted only two and a half days. Strangely enough, two and a half was the number depicted on the site’s front page, leading to conspiracy theorists going crazy on the blogs after its crash. Then what is widely considered the worst site in history, wowzersitiseasytocommunicate.com came along. This site is considered the worst site in history mainly because it was completely different than the name inferred. This site was the hardest to navigate, and extremely confusing for users. Fifty years after the founding of Facebook, it seems as though social networking sites have gone nowhere, and that is, in fact, true. Most would agree they actually have gone backwards, and now usage is reaching record lows. Mark Zuckerberg claims that they will make a comeback, and he thinks his newest release will be the site to make it happen. However, most disagree, saying that online social networking is a thing of the past, and that the easiest way to communicate is once again, African drumming.
