Initially, the phrase "social networks" was not associated with the Internet. Sociologist James Barnes characterized this concept as a structure in which people are connected with each other. Every person interacts with society in one way or another. Kindergarten, school, work, leisure - in every area people interact with each other. Communication occurs at different levels: from a banal conversation to gestures and body movements. But humanity is constantly evolving, so new languages of communication are inevitably formed. The real phenomenon of human relations is social networks. We did not even notice how tightly they entered our lives. Sometimes we do not think about their benefits and harms, the impact on real life and socialization.
Initially, the Internet was created for "professional communication", that is, the quick transfer of important data, and not photos of newborns, cute cats and puppies. In 1969, the US Department of Defense designed ARFANET, an internal military network. Of course, it was far from the virtual ideal; it was only in 1983 that the technology learned to work with the routing of data packets, becoming the first network in the world to use the IP protocol.
Secret developments became less and less secret. The Internet gradually penetrated into the homes of ordinary citizens. And yet the network was used more for commercial purposes, and most users did not understand why they needed "this Internet." But in 1995, Randy Konrads created the site classmates.com, which helped to find classmates, classmates, colleagues or former work colleagues. People got the opportunity to communicate with those whom they had not seen for many years!
Success was inevitable. That period can generally be considered “golden” for many modern IT giants. In 2004, Facebook appeared, originally intended for Harvard students. But everyone liked the idea so much that two years later the social network became available to all users of the world over 16 years old. Today Facebook is one of the most visited websites in the world.
What do we have today:
There are currently 3.96 billion people worldwide using social media (almost double the 2.07 billion in 2015).
Of the 3.96 billion (all social media users), 99% browse websites or use apps through mobile devices, and only 1.32% surf the web exclusively through traditional desktops.
90.71% of mobile Internet users actively use social networks.
83.36% of Internet users use social networks via mobile Internet or via wi-fi.
50.64% of the entire population of our planet use social networks.
Globally, the average time a person spends on social media per day is 2 hours 24 minutes. That is, if a person registered on a social network at the age of 16 and spent time there until the age of 70, talking with friends or watching photos and videos, he would spend 5.7 years of his life on this.
Today, any inhabitant of our planet has access to many different social networks. For every taste: for work, for communication with friends, for travel, for entertainment. There are even social networks for dog breeders. Each region and country develops its own social networks.
By 2022, we are approaching almost 4 billion social media users worldwide – an impressive number. This became possible because the essence of social networks lies in their wide possibilities for creating and maintaining social connections between users around the world. With their help, people can conveniently communicate with their friends and acquaintances, publish private and public content (photos, videos, texts, etc.), discuss any relevant topics, cooperate and support each other.
Finally, social networks are a convenient way of communication between a business and its target audience. On the one hand, they are optimally suited for promoting brands and their products, and on the other hand, they act as an effective feedback channel from their customers.
However, social networks can be not only useful, but also very dangerous for us. And today, the main disadvantage of social networks is increasingly surfaced, although we must be honest and say that this applies to the whole of Web 2.0 - excessive centralization. Social networks are an open source of personal data of millions and billions of real people, which are of considerable interest to law enforcement, corporate security services and intruders. Over the past decades, social network passwords have been repeatedly leaked, including such large and well-known ones as VK, Facebook, Instagram, etc. In addition, users face censorship, intrusive targeting, and duplicate content.
In this regard, there is a need for a distributed system that would solve the above problems. At this stage, users should become full owners of their own content, be able to monetize it and exchange information using decentralized services.
But now it's impossible to imagine The modern Internet without social networks, they have become such an important part of the online space. These are truly universal and multi-tasking platforms that effectively "cover" a lot of needs, goals, tasks and problems, both for ordinary users and professionals or entrepreneurs. And since life does not stand still, it is constantly changing, following new trends and content formats, more and more decentralized networks appear that try to take into account all the disadvantages of modern networks and translate them into the status of their advantages.
Today we will talk a little about a new decentralized social network based on web 3.0 on the Solana blockchain - Solcial, which allows you to use the network without fear of censorship, which is completely independent from both the state and the company managing the project.
Advantages of Solcial compared to centralized social networks:
- Lack of a central point of control. Since there are no intermediaries, no third parties will be able to control user data. This freedom reduces the risk of censorship by governments or corporations.
- Improving the interconnectedness of information. As more and more products connect to the Internet, data packets provide algorithms with a lot of different material to analyze. This will help provide more accurate information that meets the needs of each individual user.
- More efficient search. When using conventional search engines, finding the best results was quite a challenge. However, systems have improved over the years with semantically relevant search based on context and query metadata. This will make it easier to find the right information.
- Advanced advertising and marketing. Few people enjoy being bombarded with unnecessary online ads. But if the banners correspond to our interests and needs, it can be useful, and not annoying with its presence. Web 3.0 aims to improve ad matching with smarter artificial intelligence and targeting audiences based on consumer data.
- The ability to own data on the blockchain and use decentralized transactions will create a new digital economy. This will allow you to easily use and trade goods, services and content online without providing banking or personal data. Such openness will improve access to financial services and help users earn.
So, what I would like to say in conclusion is that we are now living in a critical time, when the entire population of our planet has been divided into two equal parts: those who still do not use social networks and those who use new communication technologies. Analytics show us that in the next decade social networks will become the main place for people to communicate.
Everyone will make his own conclusion what to choose - to step into the future or stay in the past. But I hope that a decentralized social platform like Solcial will see the same boom that YouTube saw in its time, and that the protection of personal data and owning your own content will become as basic rights as the right to private property.
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