Okay there was social networking before the internet.  I mean do you remember? It seems so long ago.  No cellphones or they were attached to the car like ours or big as hell.  IN part how did you Meetup so to speak.  Here is a refresher down memory lane from the 80’s 90’s okay.  Can you believe that colleges actually have course to help you understand how to social network outside the internet?  Yes cause we are so dehumanized these days with face in phones and texting.  App CRAZY.  Agnes College I found actually has a signup course for this.   And it is complimentary.

Yet the roots of social media go even deeper. Decades before the rise of the Internet, we can see evidence of the drive to shape both private communications and mass media into platforms for social connection. Several of these earlier instances — despite being based on very different technologies — share many of the characteristics of modern social media, such as using “handles” or aliases to represent identity, adopting “in crowd” lingo, and blurring the boundaries between private and public conversations.

Perusing the ‘Personals’ Time Magazine did a review on this…

the Citizen’s Band radio craze turned the airwaves into a true peer-to-peer network. Originally popular among long-haul truckers, average Americans jumped on the CB bandwagon to eavesdrop on trucker chatter and converse with each other over the Citizen’s Band frequencies.

Much of the lingo of the CB universe has an analogue in today’s social media

The 80′ 90′ we were phone junkies.    ON the phone all the time with cord in hand or making sure that we had called each other after school to setup plans.  With global telephone freaks and third way conferencing.   It was TOTALLY AWESOME…..

bUT today even so we are still seeing that social networking is being forced because people in the retro or baby boomer age are still needing that connection on a personal level but find it hard to deal with a big younger groups.  Or even better you see the younger groups taking more into activities outside phones to help environment while the older groups get into the scene.

I think it is nice to know that social networking groups can now categorize on your interests like Puggs, or Drones, Pokeman, Geeks etc… I found this a big things with Meetup.com.   and www.zoom.com