Electronic Greetings Day is on November 29, and we celebrate by sending e-cards to every person on our contact list that we haven’t chatted with in a while. Can you imagine that only 5% of Americans were on social media in 2005? E-cards, also known as electronic cards, are digital greeting cards or postcards created using digital media. These cards are usually sent via email or social media and don’t require the recipient to print them out. E-cards can contain animation and text and are of various types, including video e-cards, e-cards games, mobile e-cards, and flash animation.
History
While the telegraph, invented in the late 19th century, marked the beginning of innovation in communications technology, it was when the internet arrived a century later that social media became possible. The first social media variant, the PLATO system, was launched in 1960. The system entered the market while the first iteration of the internet, the ARPANET, was still in the works. The PLATO system offered a message-forum application (Notes), an instant messaging feature (TERM-talk), an online chat room (Talkomatic), and more.
In 1967, the ARPANET came online and evolved into the internet in the 1970s. That was followed by the introduction of personal computers (P.C.s) in the 1980s. Both of these inventions set the stage for the development of social media in the 1990s and beyond.
In November 1994, one of the earliest social networking services, GeoCities, entered the market. Close behind it was Classmates, launched in 1995, and then SixDegrees, the first online platform that allowed the use of real names, in 1997. SixDegrees is considered the first social networking site as it allowed people to sign up with their email, great profiles, and add friends to their personal network.
The 2000s saw the explosion of social media platforms, including LinkedIn, MySpace, and Friendster. Platforms like Photobucket and Flickr introduced online photo sharing, and YouTube revolutionized how videos are shared online. In 2006, Facebook and Twitter took the world by storm, becoming the two most popular social media platforms in the world. Between 2009 and the 2010s, the world saw the introduction of WhatsApp, Instagram, and Snapchat, allowing photo and video sharing. In 2020, at the height of the pandemic, TikTok became well known, quickly becoming popular among millennials and Gen Zs.
