Word-of-mouth was never expected to occupy so much of your time spent on the Internet. For humans, communication has always been a necessity. Sharing information has been evident since ages. All the shared information so far has helped forge evolutionary development and we all know that.

However, the entire buzz about social media being new isn’t really accurate. The Internet –as a medium – is new but the underlying element of sharing information isn’t. It first occurred in physical person and then the telephone systems, leading up to the very first Bulletin Board Systems (1979-1955). It was after the World Wide Web broke off into a seamless array of computers connected to each other during the year 1991 that the “tipping point’ surfaced.

In August 1988, IRC (Internet Relay Chat) was founded by Jarkko OiKarinen and even that the first time people stayed logged-in for long periods of time sharing information, communicating, files and links – a seemingly unstoppable flow of communication by passing information to networks throughout the globe.

As IRC turned out to be a ‘hot’ hang-out place for all, the Instant messengers promptly came up to replace IRC as the de-facto medium for communicating with others on the Internet. Meanwhile, there was a need to share large amount of files from one system to the other which led to the first of the Peer-to-peer file sharing programs. Napster, launched in June 1999, made this file sharing extremely popular by allowing free music files to be downloaded for free.

All of this was social indeed, but we still aren’t there yet. Sizdegrees.com was the first social networking site (SNS) launched in 1997 which allowed people to create profiles, connect with friends and share information. There was no looking back since then with the launch of Myspace, facebook and then Twitter.

In a nearby town called as ‘Blogosphere’, countless blogs emerged – each with a voice and an opinion – and this town was forever jiving with excitement and buzzing with activity with its members actively engaging themselves in verbal duels, more information sharing through blogger networks that sprouted up just as easily and quickly. Technorati was then launched as a blog directory and a blog specific search engine both rolled into one to enable blog readers and everyone else to keep a tab on their favorite bloggers.

Socialmediarockstar featured a nice write-up on a “Brief History of Social Media”  and you may want to read it.

Just information sharing, making friends and connecting with them wasn’t important; knowing what others knew and liking what others like along with buying what most people buy has become the unseen thread linking the birth of innumerable sites of powerful repute. The year 2006 saw the emergence of ‘social bookmarking’ where I read something and I like it so I ‘book mark it on the web’ so that my network can see what I liked and they might bookmark it too if they like it. This led to sites like Digg, Reddit, Deli.ci.ous and stumble-upon in the same year.

Nothing seems to stop this phenomenon. What was once curious neighborhood banter now became a rage in the digital word. This very social web rides on the fate of multi-billion dollar corporations and is responsible for billion dollar assets for companies like trust, goodwill and popularity of products and services.

Our consumerism has been growing relentlessly along with the sophistication in consumer behavior. This had a direct bearing on the direct marketing and advertising companies calling for an apt response to the rapidly changing scenario.

One of the most common characteristics of all these early social media sites was that there was an increasing need to share and exchange information across the board. While CompuServe focused largely on technical information exchange, AOL had a lot of personal interest being discussed. Corporations, the companies and everyone else In the field now realized that the tables have turned around.

The roots of this dynamic change can be largely attributed to the very pioneers of the social networking phenomenon namely: CompuServe, America Online, Tripod and Geocities. Now, the new social media sites like Twitter, rateit.com, digg, various forums online, etc control the buttons.

Primarily, any kind of advertising – or someone making a point on why I need to buy that product – has a conflict of interest built in. I know that there would be at least one reason the sales person will be pushing me on which has no direct bearing on my best interest. So when I do buy something and it doesn’t turn out to be as good as I was expecting it to be, I would then click, write and click for the whole world to see.

Consider Amazon: Their early advertising expenses weren’t justified so they took to creating buzz. They announced their famous “Shipping free above for orders above $25” and then the retail giant’s ascent to the top began. Many more brands like – and literally almost everyone on the e-commerce scene—has a “no questions asked, money-back guarantee”.

Social media, since the days of AOL all the way until way up to Twitter, has literally proved itself to be word-of-mouth on steroids. Now, it isn’t even stopping. You now have Google at the very forefront trying to dominate the social media scene. It first launched Google Wave and before we could figure out what to do with it, Google Buzz was launched very recently.

There will be a point at which there would be no sense in launching any of these sites anymore with every Internet user having at least 3-4 or perhaps even more profiles across various social media platforms. Although development and launch of new sites will stop, the relentless talk, buzz, sharing of information will never stop.

The business houses already have their tails in their legs and consumers now rule the web. What do you think? Where did you find yourself nostalgic? If you are a business, have you made necessary changes to your marketing strategy to account for social media?