Facebook will one day be a thing of the past. It's way too optimistic that it will be here to stay forever. Technologies are always changing and evolving, as are our interests in the new current technology. Most of us have social media accounts on at least one platform. Some have them all, anything that lets them connect to their friends, family and others.
The beginning
It started not so long ago. About 20 years ago really with AOL. Most of us that are on Steemit are probably too young to even remember the AOL days but it was definitely the newest and coolest at the time. It was a way to connect with your contacts via online chat and it seemed like something from the future. Sort of like an instant e-mail at the time. A few short years later AOL had gained huge momentum and gathered over 30 Million users which was unheard of at the time. The "Dot Com" boom was in full swing in the 90s and early 2000s and so was AOL. In the midst of the "Dot Com" boom there were other companies trying to do similar things. In 2000 Friendster was launched. It resembled social networks of today with a very heavy 2000s feel to it, obviously. They were gathering momentum and hit the Million User Mark very soon after their launch. Then , in 2002, came MySpace, and MySpace took the world by a storm. As came the dawn of AOL and friendster came about, MySpace was the newest and coolest. You were able to customize your page and got updates on any time a friend did anything to their wall. We became familiar with updates and we wanted to be unique. All our friends posted on our MySpace page and we posted on theirs. There were lots of messages that showed relationships between people as well as many other cool things.
The Facebook Era
Facebook started its life as a social network for college students in 2003, as most of us know from the movie "The Social Network". It grew fast among universities and soon acquired more users than MySpace. Mark Zuckerberg was a technology guru. He was a genius coder and understood what people wanted out of a social network. He quickly became a very prominent figure in the tech as well as business community. Facebook wasn't so much about personalization as much as it was about connecting people and their interests. As an individual user you can see what your friends like and as a business you can relate to your current and potential customers on a whole new level. We were used to getting updates on myspace but now we were getting them on our phone and everywhere we looked we saw Facebook.
The Future
Facebook has been going under scrutiny in recent years. They are losing users as their users are going towards different social medias. Facebook has started to acquire some of their competitors, like Instagram for example, but they need to change their model or die off like the others mentioned above. The new generation of users are wanting more privacy and more relevant content than what Facebook can provide. We are tired of getting a free service just to become the product that they sell. We need a new social media... and Steemit has a great shot at the title of best social media platform. Steemit has become popular among blockchain enthusiasts. They have a great platform in beta phase and will only improve upon their functionalities as time passes. It will also directly reward their users based on how good the content is and how influential they are. There are some kinks to work out like the bots that are polluting the community but I trust that this will be worked out by the great team of developers. So the future is almost here. It's not perfect but it's ours, so let's make the best of it and continue to improve and innovate.
