Blast From The Past
In 2007, myself and other ENA staff members visited dozens of school districts to provide information about (and in some cases, introduce educators to) the new social networking tools their students were using.
All the cool kids were on MySpace. 200 million cool kids to be exact. Facebook, the low key, university student focused network, was just starting to gain traction, becoming available to students with a valid high school email address in 2005 and finally to anyone over the age of 13 with a valid email address in 2006.
As I recall, very few teachers, parents or really anyone other than students had social networking accounts. Funny to think about now as those of us far past our college years regularly post photos of our vacations, grandchildren and complain about the new timeline feature.
Here is a slide from a presentation we did in September of 2007 showing MySpace as the 500-pound social networking gorilla with 200 million users and Facebook with a relatively tiny 39 million users.
When we did those presentations, we talked about how, even though the platforms may change, social networking looked like it was here to stay. Of course, in 2007, we illustrated that point by talking about how Friendster, one of the earliest social networking tools had been eclipsed by MySpace. (Bonus points for ANYONE who remembers Friendster!)
According to Wikipedia, as of April 24th 2012, Facebook had 900 million users and MySpace had 25 million.
It will be interesting to look back on today’s slides five years from now.
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About Barb Neligan
Barb, ENA's Customer Product Learning Facilitator, began her career as a training developer and facilitator in 1988 with the Saturn Corporation. Since that time, she’s had the opportunity to work with many great clients, including Coca-Cola, Johnston & Murphy, Healthways and the Andersen Communication Design Center. She has worked in support of educators utilizing technology in the classroom on behalf of ENA since 1995. When Barb is not talking about technology in the classroom and in the lives of students, she is out speaking to corporate groups and community organizations or telling jokes at comedy clubs, county fairs and the better meat-and-threes throughout the United States.
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