The Complete History of X at $5-a-Pop

I feel like continuing my experiment in cheap article-writing quality. I ordered 20 500-word blog posts for around $100 ($46 for ten) and I am going to be sharing them, unedited, online for your reading enjoyment.  This particular post is thematic: The History of X, thanks to 99 Cent Articles (read them all here):

The History Of Facebook

The history of Facebook is somewhat a peculiar one.  It all started with a man named Mark Zuckerberg. Mark is a computer programmer. While studying in Harvard University taking up psychology, he created a website called Facemash. On October 28, 2003 he launched the site where Harvard students can pick which person is more attractive in the two pictures shown side by side. These pictures are pictures of Harvard students that come from the nine houses on campus. Zuckerberg hacked into the private database of Harvard’s computer network and copied the pictures of students that resided in the dormitories. After the site spread and gained popularity in campus, Harvard University administration shut it down and charged mark with violation of copyrights, breach of security, and violation of individual privacy. He faced expulsion but the charges were later dropped.

The following semester, on February 4, 2004 Mark created Facebook under the site thefacebook.com. He created it because he thought that the University needed a campus-wide facebook. He took the initiative and within the first 24 hours membership reached 1,200 students and within the first month, membership consisted of more than half of the university population. With the help of Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz , Andrew McCollum, and Chris Hughes the website became a hit and after just a month membership, which originally was exclusive to only Harvard students, expanded to Stanford, Columbia and Yale. Then eventually it opened to all Ivy league schools. Before June of 2004 the site was opened to most schools in the United States and Canada. On June 2004, the base of operations of the site transferred to Palo Alto, California. In August 2005, Mark and his colleagues bought the domain name of Facebook.com for $200,000. In September 2005, High schools can now join, but high school students required an invitation before they can join. Later on registration opened to members of companies. On September 26, 2006, face book officially opened its doors to everyone around the world ages 13 and above.

The history of facebook so far is a short one yet in that short span of time it has garnered unparalleled popularity among its peers of social networking web sites. As of the present, joining in is for free. The site receives its revenues from advertising. Yahoo and Google is interested in a buyout and a rumoured amount of 2 billion dollars was being offered, but Zuckerberg has not expressed any interest in selling the company. As of July 2007, a reported 30 million members have an account and rising.

The site’s features have also evolved. A number of add-ons can now be used by embers, not to mention add-ons they can make by themselves. Members can even post advertisements, play games, and join smaller networks and fan profiles. A user can even send gifts to friends and chat directly to friends that are online. Games can be played with or against friends or even people not in one’s network of friends. Updates on activities of friends can be easily tracked.

Here’s another one:

The History Of Twitter

Since the boom of social networking websites, people have been addicted to being connected with friends and getting up to date information about their favourite artists and hobbies and stuff. None of these sites are as unique and gives personal updates of friends and other interests the networker has than Twitter. Not like any other social networking sites, Twitter’s main feature is its messaging service.

Making use of present technology like PDA’s (Personal Digital assistants), SMS, mobile internet, laptops, and countless technology utilizing wireless internet, Twitter broadcasts messages from and to a network of people connected through Twitter. The messages called tweets are personal messages composed of 140 characters sent by users through their Twitter account to a network of friends and following. The main idea behind Twitter is giving the user an opportunity to send and receive updates from friends and other people of interest without the hassle of sending large number of e-mail and SMS. Twitter broadcasts a user’s tweet to his network, composed of friends and whoever wants to get updates from that user called followers, and receives updates from that network at the same time.

But, how did Twitter begin? The history of Twitter is a long and interesting one. It all starts with a man named Jack Dorsey. Jack is a software engineer who has been interested in the flow of information around a network and developed software for a dispatch company at age 14. At age 18, he moved from his hometown of St. Louis, MO to New York to study at NYU and work as a programmer who writes dispatch software for a courier service named DMS. Dorsey’s fascination about dispatching, which was really just a network of taxi drivers and couriers giving an update on what they were doing started the idea that eventually became Twitter. In 1999, 8 years after starting to write dispatch software, at age 22 Dorsey created a software for his RIM850, the predecessor of BlackBerry, to broadcast an e-mail to his friends by just sending one e-mail. The idea was shelved however since most people then didn’t own a RIM850 but owned personal computers and there were no chance of a back-and-forth messaging. In 2000, Jack created his own company that provides dispatching services that made use of the Internet to taxi companies, courier services and emergency services.

For the next couple of years, with the advancement of communication technology and mobile communication, Jack Dorsey continued to develop a software that would meld together instant messaging and text messaging. In 2006, he met up with ODEO co-founder Evan Williams and Biz Stone and discussed his idea. In just 2 weeks, a prototype of Twitter was implemented by ODEO as internal services for its employees. On July 2006, they launched a full scale version of Twitter and it became Twitter.com. Three months after, Jack, Biz and Evan created Obvious Corp and acquired ODEO from its shareholders and investors. Then in 2007, Twitter became an independent company. In March 2007, Twitter attracted success and acquired $22 million from venture capitalists and was launched for mass adaption.

The history of Twitter is just beginning. Its uses and features are still expanding and its future seems like a bright one.

And here’s another History of X article for you:

The History Of Blogging

Blogging is a worldwide phenomenon that has taken the digital community into a media frenzy. From being an online diary to a marketing tool for different mediums, blogging is one of the most popular digital tools being used today. But how exactly did blogging start? Let’s step back a while and discover the history of blogging.

Jorn Barger coined the word “weblog” on December 17, 1997 as being a log published in the Internet. Peter Merholz shortened the term into the now popular word “blog” by breaking the word weblog into “we blog” on Spring of 1999. Evan Williams then extended the use of the term to being both a noun, that describes the weblog, and a verb, that describes the act of writing the weblog. The term blogger was also coined to describe the person creating the weblog.

Blogging evolved from online diaries, which was an account of a person’s daily activities and personal opinions. This started roughly around 1994 when the Internet was starting to be widely used. Those considered as the earliest bloggers are, Justin Hall, Jerry Pournelle, and Dave Winers. They came from different forms of life and wrote about different disciplines. Another form of blogging that came out during that time was something called sousveillance. It was made by combining text, pictures and video and transmitted through the Internet live via a device called an EyeTap that is connected to a computer. The first paid blogger was Steve Gibson, when he was paid to be a full time blogger in February 8, 1997.

Many websites that where popular often had a sections updating their visitors about what’s new about them. Most early weblogs were just parts of websites that posts updates manually. Modern blogs came into existence when tools that facilitate publication and maintenance of web articles evolved into something where articles can be posted in reverse chronological process and made it easier for non-technical people to understand and publish their own blogs. This spawned blog hosting websites where bloggers can just create their own blog, then access and edit their articles with a few clicks of the mouse.

After a slow start, blogging gained increased popularity starting 1999. With blog hosting sites adding tools where visitors of the blog sites can leave comments about the articles posted there, blogging suddenly become interactive. Linking to other websites and pages was now possible and with weblog search engines it was now easier to look for bloggers with the same line of interests or blogs which discussed the same topics.

By 2001, several blogs written by American writers, gained popularity. With most blogs inclined to the topic of politics, especially after the September 11 tragedy and the war on Afghanistan and Iraq, a lot people expressed their views and opinions through blogging. Blogs also became a platform for gathering news information. Since bloggers are from different walks of life and has access to different resources, information gathering became faster and with more bloggers affirming stories and data gathered the news became more credible. The history of blogging gave politicians and public figures that used blogging to reach out to their constituents and fans gave them more credibility and in turn they became more popular.

And, finally, the history of social media:

The History of Social Media

The increasing accessibility of the internet has integrated social networking into our daily lives. From phones, laptops and personal computers we are able to connect with friends and meet new friends on the different social network sites. The proliferation of different social network sites makes you wonder about the history of social media.

Websites like MySpace, Facebook, Plurk and Twitter, to name a few, evolved from Six Degrees over a decade ago. Six Degrees is where the history of social media started. The website innovated the same general principles that shaped social media of today with the purpose of bringing people together in the virtual world. The pioneering social network site utilized features available on different online technology. For instance, crating user profiles was taken from dating sites; list of friends was from ICQ and other messaging platforms at the time; and sharing friends with others was singularly taken from classmates.com.

The first social medium was not a success, though. The idea was too ahead of its time and people didn’t quite understand how they could use it to their advantage. And around that time, the internet is not as accessible as it is today. Members of the network are not online as often as they should. Add to that the uneasiness of users to put out information online and the weariness to interact with strangers. Because of these, Six Degrees closed down after just 3 years in operation.

The early demise of Six Degrees didn’t stop the history of social media from forging on. The early years of social media established its three main characteristics — public or semi-public profiles for users, ability to connect to others users with shared interest and ability to view, meet and make new connections with other individuals. Over the years, enterprising individuals helped revolutionized social media as we know it today.

Friendster, MySpace and Facebook are three important phases in the history of social media. They shaped the business, cultural and research landscape of modern social media. Friendster was the first social network site to hit the mainstream. Many of its users left because the site encountered several technical difficulties, disruption of social balance and rupture of trust between users and the sites.

MySpace capitalized on Friendster’s alienation of its early users. Additionally, MySpace regularly added features based on user demand and allows users to personalize their pages. This feature of MySpace started the copy/paste code culture in social networking.

The leading social networking site today is Facebook. It was initially launched as a private online community among Harvard students. Gradually it opened to other universities and colleges, businesses and high schools; until it eventually expanded to include everyone. The advantage of Facebook is its ability to restrict access in closed networks. And what attracts users to this site is its capability to allow outside developers to build “Applications”. These “Applications” allow users to personalize their profiles, perform other task and promote greater interaction among users.

Social media has become part of our daily lives the way cell phones did before. We use it as a way to communicate with friends and family, a way to express ourselves and a way to meet other people. We rarely let a day pass without checking in on any of our social networking accounts.

So, how much have you learned?  Are you up-to-speed now?  Are you educated?  Also, what do you think of the content?  Does it pass?  Is it worth five-dollars-per-post?

Be sure to read the rest of the 99 Cent Articles posts

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