I wrote about the history of social networks. You weren’t around in 1844 when some electronic dots and dashes were tapped out by hand on a telegraph machine to send a first electronic message. Some of us are more familiar with services such as Compuserve and younger readers might only have entered social with Facebook and Twitter.
A social media trend that is more recent is social-enhanced websites. So many new companies and websites in categories such as the sharing economy have added their own social elements and tools. Do you ever leave reviews on a shopping site? Do you review restaurants and businesses? All of those are using social tools, and they may also piggyback on the big social sites by allowing you to post reviews or share posts and articles via Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr or old-fashioned email.
I see enhanced social media used in peer-to-peer lending platforms, crowdfunding, apartment/house renting and couchsurfing, ride and car-sharing, coworking, knowledge and talent-sharing.
Social media has come a long way since that telegraph and it still has plenty of new places where it will emerge.
Kenneth Ronkowitz 