When social media is called, the first thing that comes to mind is content generated and shared by users. After Internet became an information dump, people who want to spend their time effectively preferred to share only contents that are useful according to them in order to prevent other people to waste also their time.

Since it helps us to decide which ones are useful among millions of image, video, music, news and blog inputs, social media grew incredibly fast and continues to grow in every passing second.

Another issue that makes social media so important is certainly being the most effective tool we have ever met for making friends. 21^st century became a period that individuals turned in on themselves and families fell apart quickly. Since people were deprived of communication and transportation facilities before, they could only communicate with other people in a narrow geographical area. Thus, it was necessitating close friendship and kinship bonds.

However, social media has the power to enable you to meet many people around the world that you have a common point with them. As long as individuals meet with new people and share everything with them, social media became an “addiction” soon.

It is the subject of other articles to explain how effectively social media is used or whether it is really used for serving its purpose. Yet, we can say that the social media is a communication revolution not only in Internet but also in the world we have not met yet.

Well, how did this entire story begin? Actually, the basic of social media began with BBS (Bulletin Board Systems) which was the first product of the desire of people for meeting and communicating with each other by computer. Even before real-time chat systems, people were sharing by means of BBS. Even though it was not a widespread system in Turkey, we know that many people in other countries were sharing over BBS.

Real communication over computer began by IRC (Internet Relay Chat) in Turkey.

IRC, ICQ, and Instant Messaging Software

IRC was begun to be used in 1988 and became widespread in Turkey by means of a script called mIRC. Having ‘@’ or ‘+’ authorities in an IRC server was accepted as an ultimate level in personal growth. In other words, people loved to chat with the confident and comfort by hiding behind anonymous identities. So much so that, Internet Cafés opened everwhere were just meeting this chatting needs of people. Many Turkish adolescents were spending their time in Internet for chatting instead of accessing information.

Soon after, people bored to spend time by chatting with people by anonymous identities that they had no chance to meet again easily. In the middle of 90s, a new era was established by means of the instant messaging software called ICQ (I seek you).

In the instant messaging process started with ICQ, people began to give their ICQ numbers to each other as if it was their phone numbers for chatting over ICQ. This software also had features to search by particular criteria such as name, online/offline status or location (for example, female members between 18-23 y/o living in Istanbul etc.) in order to meet new people.

Since ICQ was not easy to use (it was working very slowly) and there was no support behind the software, MSN Messenger became popular in 2003.

MSN Messenger is known by all Internet users as an Instant Messaging Software with its high usage rate today (in fact, we can say that it has no serious rival). It is accepted as the essential software for Internet users by its success in easy image and file share and visual and audible communication developed especially in recent versions. It seems that there is no application that will be a critical nominee for being the most popular instead of MSN Messenger in near future.

Even though it is a successful application, we can not say that it is so successful for enabling people to meet with new people. Due to its nature, you should know the MSN address of an individual and to be accepted by opposite party to begin chatting with him/her. Thus, people use MSN Messenger to contact with people they already know.

Society Websites

Emotional (mostly hormonal) reasons have important roles in the origin of meeting with new people, let’s face it. People pine for having new girlfriends/boyfriends since IRC. People getting married by means of IRC and ICQ became materials for printed media. It is also same for MSN. However, such software is quite far from enabling you to meet with people with characteristics you want.

Thus, social media was founded on society websites (which were mostly established for commercial purposes). When Mark Zuckenberg said that they established Facebook for “picking up girls”, media exaggerated this statement; however, almost all social constitutions in Internet are founded unfortunately on “picking up new girlfriend/boyfriend”.

Internet entrepreneurs noticing this intention made initiatives successively in order provide people to meet with new people with characteristics they want. The first successful example in Turkey was SiberAlem. Unfortunately Siberalem could not maintain its success and Yonja got the leadership in the market which was established in 2004.

Yonja followed a different way unlike the ways followed by other dating websites until that day and created a social media environment in real terms in Turkey by focusing on real friendships as well as “picking new girlfriends/boyfriends”. The website was up for being a global project with its English interface together with Turkish one; however things did not go as they planned. As Facebook made a name for itself, Yonja lost its popularity and was sold for 15 millon dollar to Mynet in 2007. By losing its popularity much more due to both wrong strategies after the purchase and the sudden increase of Facebook, there is a shadow of its former self today. It is so stalemated today that it uses even Facebook Connect. It means that Yonja simply accepted “the defeat”.

After Yonja lost its leadership, istanbul.net established as the first local dating website managed to succeed by its decent management, successful promotion campaigns and user-friendly interface and maintains its market domination despite the hegemony of Facebook. Although the service administrated and developed by Magnet displayed local growth under various domain names such as ankara.net, izmir.net and bursa.net, it is known that these additional websites do not have great influences since İstanbul is an attraction center of Turkey.

First Steps of Social Media and Their Reflections in Turkey

Even though myspace established in 2003 provided first steps of social media by creating a great impact in the USA, it is still a distant and cold network for Turkey. Meeting with social network in Turkey was only occurred by the sudden increase of Facebook in 2006.

Facebook started out by promising you to find everybody you knew in the past but not staying in touch anymore. Like Yonja, it was also aiming to provide dating without giving it prominence and its dominance over its all rivals was being a service totally free. By allowing people to find new girlfriends/boyfriends as well as to establish new friendships and to share contents over a simple interface, Facebook managed to change the world by allowing everybody to generate content easily.

Today, millions of people who do not have any idea about web share their favourite sings, videos, news or articles easily by means of Facebook; in other words, they generate new contents and they do not have any difficulty in it. This is why the increase of Facebook can not be stopped. At first, everyone was arguing the privacy issue by asking “who want to share his/her private life with the whole world?” Now we know that people take photos only to publish in Facebook. With all these features, Facebook forms the basis of social media in Turkey even it is not in the world and it increases its market domination day by day.

Another feature of Facebook that makes it so powerful is enabling 3^rd parties or individual developers to develop applications working on Facebook by means of API structure of the website. Thus, Facebook aims its users to generate not only contents but also software that will ensure users to spend more time in the website.

A short note to see how powerful course is Facebook: It is expected that active user numbers of the website to reach 1 billion which is 300 million today.

YouTube

While Facebook was encouraging people to meet with new people by making their cases with their pasts and personalities, YouTube initiated a visual broadcasting period.

Before YouTube, broadcasting was a hard work monopolized by television channels and it was never crossed by ordinary people. By simple interface of YouTube like Facebook, people shared their videos with the entire world just by a few clicks. This was so brilliant idea that everybody rushed into YouTube as if they were waiting for it for centuries and as a result, YouTube was purchased by Google for a huge amount 1.6 billion dollar) in a short time.

The idea and vision of YouTube was so effective that many clones were established. None of them, neither Google Video nor another one, did not even come close to the success of YouTube. Two video projects that can be taken as serious appeared in Turkey. One of them is İzlesene made by NOKTA A.Ş. and other one is Timsah made by Magnet. Even though both of them are very successful projects, YouTube still in the first place in Turkey. In fact, high hits of these two local applications are caused by the access restriction of YouTube in Turkey. When this restriction is removed, both local applications may hard up.

YouTube managed to create so different user loyalty that Turkish visitors learnt everything about proxy and how to make DNS configurations since the access to the website is restricted in Turkey by the decision of Telecommunication Association.  The success of YouTube is of course caused by being the first one and the technical support which is almost infinite.

YouTube was used as a great propaganda tool in American Presidency Elections performed in 2008 even though it is not being used for such purposes in Turkey yet. The video for “Yes, We Can” campaign which brought presidency to Obama was watched for over 14 million times on YouTube.

YouTube growing and getting strong maintains its domination in the video market though it is restricted to access in Turkey. It is also not expected that any application would supersede YouTube in the near future.

Flickr

Video was not the only thing that people wanted to share. It is clear that people had photographs more than videos. Stock photography websites were commercial applications which were aiming to sell photographs taken and retouched by professional photographers and Flickr filled the deficiency of a tool enabling end users to share their own photographs with the entire world freely.

Flickr allowing everyone to share their photographs and to access these shared photographs achieved such a great success that there are approximately 4 billions of photographs in it. This is currently the widest photograph archive in the world.

Flickr is almost unrivalled in the market as a social media application ensuring people to meet with each other by means groups. There is no need to be an oracle to predict that it has great opportunities to grow more by means of the support of Yahoo behind it.

Source: This article was based on The History and Evolution of Social Media published in Webdesigner Depot.