Yesterday afternoon in the SociaLNK office we were discussing the origins of Social Media – how did it all start out and does that give us any hints for where we are going? Nowadays there are sites for almost anything you can imagine and social networks seems relevant to almost every human endeavour. I guess humans are social animals and we enjoy the opportunity to share and discuss in all aspects of our lives.

For me the first example of group sharing across the internet was probably the Bulletin Boards in the late seventies which became increasingly popular across the next decade particularly within universities. Internet Relay Chat (IRC) was developed for UNIX based systems in 1988. It was probably the father of Instant Messaging system although these really developed in the mid-90’s with ICQ and others. This is where a new language started developing with emoticons and abbreviations like “LOL”.

A colleague suggested to me that Dating sites were the first true Social Media Systems. I disagree although they allowed one to keep a profile and photo they didn’t really facilitate the sharing of information or ideas.

I would argue that the first modern day Social Network was Six Degrees (launched 1997). This site allowed you to create a profile and a friends list – a number of others followed including AsianAvenue, MiGente and BlackPlanet. Live journal (1999) took a slightly different approach where users created blogs … users were encouraged to follow each other and create groups.

The label Web 2.0 arrived in 2002 and really marks a huge shift in the way people interacted with the web. This was the start of the “conversation” in Social Media. The really big changes came about with the advent of services like Friendster (2002), LinkedIn (2003), MySpace (2003) and Facebook (2004). Each of these cater for slightly different audiences.

For instance LinkedIn is for professionals who want to share contacts. MySpace allows users to customize their own space and is very popular amongst the Young. Facebook is used much more generally across a wide strata of society and also increasingly companies. This year Facebook passed the 3 million user mark. In doing so Facebook has become a powerful strategic tool for marketers to access millions of potential clients in their own homes 24/7.

The last five years have seen an incredible rise in the number of new technologies available within the social media sphere. Niche sites like Ning, Photo and Video sharing sites (Flickr and YouTube), Book-Marking sites like Digg and Delicious), Livecasting (both audio and video) and of course the infamous real time update tools like Twitter.

What is interesting about each of these new technologies is that they do not stand alone many of them can be shared. So a Facebook user can link to a YouTube video. Twitter feeds can be posted directly to ones Facebook site.

I don’t think anyone of us could have imagined todays social networking technology ten years ago … I am really excited about what the next ten years will bring!

I came across some interesting data about how the genders divide in the social media world. The graph shows that across most social media sites women are participating at least equally if not more than their male counterparts. This is fascinating since most recent studies show that in the U.S. woman and men are now just about equal in terms of their actual internet use. However I hadn’t realised that there was such clear evidence that showed female uptake of social media.

The gender divide does depend to some extent on the technology in question. For LinkedIn and YouTube equal numbers of men and women seem to be participating. Digg is a real outlier with 64% male users. A quick look at todays news pages on Digg reveals that the content is highly technology and gaming related. So maybe that is understandable. Twitter and Facebook show a 14 % difference between men and women. This is significant difference!

I guess we shouldn’t be to surprised by this data as in many societies women are the main maintainers of social relations. Chatting and sharing information is part and parcel of most women’s daily life. Social network sites naturally support these behaviours. However this hard data should be particularly salient for online retailers. It is a well touted fact that woman are the main decision makers within the home when it comes to making retail purchases. Thus it would seem that social media must be becoming the obvious way to market to these important influencers.

Social media marketing does not deal in the old fashioned push of advertising. Instead it concentrates on becoming engaged in the conversations that are going on amongst your customers. This can be done by blogging, sharing content, providing forums or becoming a part of your customer’s social networks in a proactive way. Positively promoting your brand through social media channels has a proven effect on sales.

SociaLNK specialises in taking a companies brand and identifying an appropriate social media marketing strategy for it’s niche. Clearly if you are attempting to sell to women then this is a strategy that you cannot afford to miss!