History of social media: 2010 - part 3

A lot has happened this year that involved social media: site redesigns, lawsuits, casting calls, #TwitterProm, and even passion crimes. See below our selection of memorable moments in the evolution of social media in 2010, and please tell us what we forgot.

What other events would you include?

2010

January 2010. MUBI: Mubi launched a new branch of the site, called the Garage. Run by festival programmers, it allows aspiring filmmakers to upload and share their work with the public.

January 2010. YOUTUBE: YouTube began an online film rental service to compete with rental stores and online DVD rental services.

January 2010. TWITTER: CollegeBlender, a school-based social network of student, alumni and faculty blogs, was nominated for a Shorty Award in the #education category for helpful tweets. Shorty Awards are given to the best producers of real-time content through Twitter.
 

January 2010. REDDIT: Reddit users raised $134,000 for victims of the Haitian earthquake. This was the first time Reddit users had come together to donate money for such a cause. It was also the most money donated to the relief efforts from an open source website.

February 2010: MYSPACE: Owen Van Natta, chief of MySpace, stepped down as Facebook began to beat MySpace in popularity. Mike Jones and Jason Hirschhorn replaced him as co-presidents. Before going to MySpace, Van Natta had been the chief revenue officer of Facebook.

March 2010. YOUTUBE: YouTube launched a new, simpler site design to increase the time users spent on the site. In May 2010, YouTube reached a new high, 2 billion views per day, up from 1 billion views per day in October 2009. The new design allows viewers to see relevant comments (as voted on by other viewers) and comments from the person who uploaded the video.  

March 4, 2010. CLASSMATES.COM: The Seattle-based site agreed to a $9.5 million settlement in a class action lawsuit against the site claiming it sent fraudulent e-mails informing users that old friends were trying to connect with them. Users had to pay the site to connect with these alleged old friends.

April 16, 2010. FOURSQUARE: The location-based social networking site acknowledged “Foursquare Day” on April 16 very year. It was started by a man from Tampa, Fla. in honor of the network.

May 2010. MUBI: Mubi signed a contract with SONY, making a Mubi application available in Europe through PlayStation 3. European users can watch hundreds of new international films on their televisions via PlayStation. The service is set to expand to North America in the future.

May 17, 2010: YOUTUBE: For the fifth anniversary of the site, YouTube coordinators created the “YouTube Five Year Channel,” which started the “My YouTube Story” project, in which users can tell stories about how YouTube has influenced their lives. Celebrities such as Conan O’Brien posted video lists of their favorite YouTube videos. Users of YouTube still use the channel to share their stories although the anniversary has already passed.

June 2010. PLAYSTATION: Sony reported that PlayStation Home had reached over 14 million users. Playstation Home, originally designed for players to meet, play or exhcnage information about the games, has evolved into a social network where users can share links, pictures, video footage, and can buy actually items from the networks many stores.

July 2010. COLLEGEBLENDER: The site reached 1,000 users. Four people started the site with no funding or investors in November 2009. To date, CollegeBlender is one of the largest student-only blog network.

July 2010. FACEBOOK: Rachel Wade, now 20 years old, was found guilty of stabbing Sarah Ludemann, 18, to death in 2009 over a boy they were both dating. Both girls attended Pinellas Park High School at one time. The girls fought through Facebook and MySpace messages for months leading up to the murder.

July 13, 2010. FACEBOOK: Parents in Fleming Island, Fla. had a graduation party at their house for their teenage son. The mother, Janelle Snyder, posted party pictures showing her and her husband playing beer pong and drinking with the students on her Facebook page. The parents were arrested. They were charged with hosting an open house party and providing alcohol to minors.

August 2010. TWITTER: Prior to the Emmy Awards, host Jimmy Fallon used Twitter to solicit funny comments about Emmy presenters. He read some of the comments while introducing the presenters during the Emmy Awards.

August 2010. REDDIT: Ben Huh, owner of the meme site I Can Has Cheezburger and affiliated sites, made a public offer to purchase Reddit. Conde Nast currently owns Reddit and he thought the site should have less corporate involvement. So far, no deals have been made.

August 2010. TWITTER: “#TwitterProm” became a trending topic on Twitter. Users tweeted about their prom plans (dates, attire, and sex) There was truly no importance to this rather than teenagers discussing over twitter what they wish would happen at their REAL, HIGH SCHOOL prom.

August 2010. COLLEGEBLENDER: Ship2School, an international college shipping service, started a partnership with CollegeBlender to promote its “Ride to School Like a Rockstar” contest. The promotion gave college students a chance to win a ride to school in a limo. The winner was Dylan Pyle from Newburyport, Massachusetts, attending UMASS Amherst.

August 2010. FOURSQUARE: Over 15,000 venues and businesses across the U.S. began offering “Special Offers” to users who checked into their locations. This began a new wave of networking and increased business among those who participated.

August 4, 2010. SCRIBD. After Federal Judge Vaughn Walker overturned California’s Proposition 8, which denied same-sex couples the right to marry, a PDF version of the judge’s ruling was posted on Scribd. It became one of the site’s most popular documents ever uploaded, reaching 100,000 views in 24 minutes.

August 6, 2010. FACEBOOK: An Ohio woman found pictures of her husband on a Florida woman’s Facebook page. He was married to both women at the same time, and got sued for bigamy.  This becomes a nationally known case in which  Facebook “evidence” is used.

August 8, 2010. TWITTER: Twitter teamed up with MTV to find the first Twitter Jockey (TJ), someone with a large following on the site who could tweet pop culture news. Gabi Gregg of Chicago, 23, founder of the blog “Young, Fat and Fabulous,” won the contest and became the first ever TJ.

August 9, 2010. CLASSMATES.COM: The site announced it would relaunch by the end of 2010 to include nostalgia content. Members will be able to view newspaper clippings, and radio and television broadcasts from the year they graduated high school. Thousands of yearbooks will be digitally copied to the site.

August 17, 2010. FACEBOOK: Former employees filed a lawsuit against Tom Shannon, the owner of a Manhattan bowling alley and nightclub visited by celebrities, alleging that he used sites like Facebook and MySpace to screen out minorities and others he did not want to hire or have in his club. The employees claimed Shannon dismissed them on the basis of race, gender, and in one instance, an employee’s pregnancy.

August 27, 2010. FACEBOOK: A 45-year old British man from Worthing, West Sussex, was sentenced to four years in prison for publishing up to 100,000 pictures of child sexual abuse on Facebook. He used the site to swap child pornography with people in the United States, Australia and Canada.

August 27, 2010. FACEBOOK: A lawsuit was filed against Facebook, claiming the site sells names, photos and other information of minors who click the “like” button on online advertising. The lawsuit alleges that Facebook sells this information without parental consent.

August 31, 2010. FACEBOOK: A California man allegedly tortured his girlfriend over a post she made on her Facebook profile, keeping her in her home for days and threatening to kill her. She was able to escape and police arrested him.  Police said that is the first case in that county as a direct result of a Facebook argument.

August 31, 2010. MYSPACE: Trying to stay competitive, MySpace has started to offer users integration of their profile information into Facebook and Twitter accounts. The popularity of MySpace has declined and Facebook and Twitter’s popularity increases.

September 2010. FOURSQUARE: Foursquare helped launch a global effort to encourage its users to get tested for STDs.

January 2010. MYSPACE: Fox and MySpace launched a contest to award a role in the television show Glee. Registered MySpace users aged 16 and above could upload videos of themselves singing to enter the contest. About 28,000 people submitted auditions and 85,090,415 votes were casted for the hopefuls. Out of the nearly 28,000 people, two roles will be filled.

See Part 1 and Part 2 of this timeline of social media.