These days, we tend to take social media for granted. We even hire people on the basis of their purported skills with social media. However, in order to understand how far we have to go in social media, we have to take a look back at how far we've come.

In 1969, Compuserve was the first company to use a then-nascent technology known as dial-up. The company dominated the field all through the 1980's and into the 1990's, when it began to receive competition from such companies as AOL and Prodigy.

In 1971, the first email was sent.

In 1978, two Chicago computer programmers started the "trolling" and the flame wars with their creation of a bulletin board system (BBS), where general announcements were made, friends were informed of meetings, and information was shared. This was further expanded in 1979, when Usenet was created to connect Duke University and the University of North Carolina.

In 1984, Prodigy came onto the scene to offer competition to Compuserve. By 1990, it had become the largest dial up service provider, with almost a half-million subscribers. In 1994, Prodigy was seen as a pioneer in the sale of the World Wide Web services to the average consumer. Soon after, however, Prodigy was resold countless times, and it's now part of AT&T.

In 1985, AOL entered the playing field.

In 1988, IRC (Internet Relay Chat) was created. This system was used for file sharing, link sharing, and keeping in touch electronically. This was the "father" of instant messaging as we know it today -- it was also in IRC where the "LOLSpeak" began (LOL, BRB, and other abbreviations were first used in IRC), as well as emoticons and avatars.

In 1989, British engineer Tim Berners-Lee began working on CERN, the platform upon which the World Wide Web was based. CERN would donate that technology to the world in 1993. In 1992, a Tripod was opened as an online community for college students. The following year, GeoCities was opened by Beverly Hills Internet; the company was the first to offer websites to people on a general scale.

That same year, Earthlink started up as an online service provider for what was then known as "the information superhighway."

The first-ever social network was called Six Degrees (based on the "six degrees of separation" theory, that all people are connected to others by six degrees or less), and it was created in 1997. Here, users could create their own profiles, and become friends with others. In 2000, it was purchased for $125 million, before it was shut down the following year. Between 1997 and 2001, other social networks similar to Six Degrees were created, including Black Planet, MiGente, and AsianAvenue...all of which were considered "dating" sites.

In 1999, LiveJournal took a completely different approach to social networking -- creating "followers" off of the basis of constantly-updated blogs.

Around the same time, RPG's (role playing games) began creating their own social networks online, as well. The most popular RPG, which is still going on today, is WoW (World of Warcraft).

It wasn't until the early 2000's that we saw the explosion of social networking as we know it today.

In 2002, Friendster debuted. It was the first modern, general social network, and even though it doesn't have the presence in the United States that it once had, it still has a formidable presence in Asia, where 90% of its user base is still located today.

In 2003, Hi5 was created. Again, while it's not as popular as it once was, it's still a formidable social network, with over 60 million active users.

That same year, LinkedIn was founded -- dedicated almost strictly to business, LinkedIn is still a popular site for employees to find new jobs and be connected to the upper aeschelons of corporate America.

And finally, in 2003, came the mother of all social networks: MySpace. It had all the benefits of every other modern social network out there today: sending bulletins out to all your friends, customizing profiles, and instant messaging.

In 2004, Facebook started out as a Harvard-only social network, then expanded to other schools, and finally became a general market social network in 2006. In 2008, Facebook surpassed MySpace as the most popular social network, and it continues to grow.

In 2006, Twitter was launched, and by the 2007 South by Southwest conference, it became the most popular "real time" social network on the Internet. Many celebrities have joined Twitter since its inception.

Today, thanks to the prevalence of mobile phones, social networking has become prevalent and common in every day life. Social networking is common for both business users and personal users, from high end celebrities to the average person.