Social media is a type of online mass communication that allows people to share information,

ideas, private messages, and other content (such movies) via websites for social networking
and microblogging. Although the terms "social networking" and "social media" can be used
interchangeably, social networking is typically understood to refer to people creating
communities within those communities, whereas social media is mainly concerned with
leveraging social networking sites and associated platforms to create an audience.

Early social media platforms started to emerge practically as soon as technology could support
them. Early 1970s saw the introduction of chat and e-mail systems, but it was not until 1979 with
the launch of the USENET discussion group network that enduring communities emerged.
Users could send and receive messages in newsgroups, or subject-specific discussion forums,
using USENET.

People could communicate on USENET and other discussion boards, like privately hosted
bulletin board systems (BBSs), but each was effectively a closed system. The Mosaic web
browser, which was released in 1993, connected those systems with an intuitive graphical user
interface. Faster Internet connections made it feasible to access more multimedia information
than was available in the text-heavy newsgroups, and the World Wide Web's architecture made
it simple to move from one site to another with a single click.

Classmates.com and SixDegrees.com were the first businesses to develop social networks
based on web technologies. Classmates.com, which was established in 1995, drew visitors to
its website through an aggressive pop-up advertising strategy. It founded its social network on
the connections that already existed between graduates of high school and college classes,
military branches, and workplaces. The first genuine social networking website was
SixDegrees.com.