First post: A history of online public messaging

Friend of a Friend: The Facebook That Could Have Been

Why didn't the FOAF standard give us distributed social networking in the 2000s?

Shifts in U.S. Social Media Use, 2020–2024: Decline, Fragmentation, and Enduring Polarization

The social media ecosystem appears to be in flux. Twitter’s rebranding to X has come to symbolize a broader reorganization of online publics – political reshuffling, user attrition, and uncertainty over the role of legacy platforms. Simultaneously, the shift from text-based, networked feeds toward algorithmically curated, short-form video has accelerated, with TikTok setting the pace for the wider ecosystem [18, 14, 16]. At the same time, everyday communication increasingly migrates from large, open networks to semi-private spaces such as group chats and messaging apps. Commentators describe a digital public sphere in transition: smaller, more fragmented, less dominated by traditional social networking sites, and rise of more broadcast-oriented forms of media – with some even suggesting that we are seeing the beginning of the end of the social media era.

How It All Started: Pre-W3C Web and Internet Background

1971: Ray Tomlinson of BBN creates email program to send messages across a distributed network.

The Future of Group Messaging

An analysis of modern messaging, and the evolutionary next steps.

A decade and a half of instability: The history of Google messaging apps

Sixteen years after the launch of Google Talk, Google messaging is still a mess.

Facebook Wrestles With the Features It Used to Define Social Networking (Published 2021)

Likes and shares made the social media site what it is. Now, company documents show, it’s struggling to deal with their effects.

How to Fix Facebook—Before It Fixes Us

An early investor explains why the social media platform’s business model is such a threat—and what to do about it.

Publishers fearing Facebook dependency: fight for your future, reinvent RSS.

Right now Facebook accounts for over 40% of all traffic for U.S. news organizations, making many dependent on the social network for…

Signal Messenger: Speak Freely

Say "hello" to a different messaging experience. An unexpected focus on privacy, combined with all of the features you expect.

Workplace by Facebook opens to sell enterprise social networking to the masses | TechCrunch

After 20 months in a closed beta under the working title Facebook at Work, (as we predicted it would the other week) today Facebook is finally

Criticism of Facebook

Facebook (and parent company Meta Platforms) has been the subject of criticism and legal action since it was founded in 2004.[1] Criticisms include the outsize influence Facebook has on the lives and health of its users and employees, as well as Facebook's influence on the way media, specifically news, is reported and distributed. Notable issues include Internet privacy, such as use of a widespread "like" button on third-party websites tracking users,[2][3] possible indefinite records of user information,[4] automatic facial recognition software,[5][6] and its role in the workplace, including employer-employee account disclosure.[7] The use of Facebook can have negative psychological and physiological effects[8] that include feelings of sexual jealousy,[9][10] stress,[11][12] lack of attention,[13] and social media addiction that in some cases is comparable to drug addiction.[14][15]

Measuring The Health of Our Public Conversations - Cortico

By Deb Roy, Eugene Yi, Russell Stevens Published: March 1, 2018 The Internet and social media have transformed modern society in many positive ways by connecting us to the world’s information, enabling social connections that transcend space and time, and giving everyone a voice. Within this transformation, social media have become an essential part of

FediForum | Growing the Open Social Web:<br>An Online Un-Workshop

Since the Twitter takeover by Elon Musk over three years ago, the Open Social Web has been adopted by an enthusiastic community. People world-wide are building and using open social platforms and open social protocols to better interact with others online.

The fall... and rise and rise and rise of chat networks

From CompuServe to Telegram, chat has come a long way—and it's just getting started.