Do you remember the days when Geocities and bulletin board systems walked the earth? It might be a stretch to say that these early communities were social media. Certainly, they laid the groundwork for what we use today and played a key role in how electronic communities came together. To jog your memory and provide some entertainment value, an interesting chart in a newsletter by law firm Morrison & Foerster here is worth a glance. Yes, a law firm.
Geocities, for those of you too young to remember, was launched back in 1995 near the beginning of the Web and one of the first sites that made it easier for individuals to have their own Web pages. It was later purchased by Yahoo for a whopping $3.6 billion and ultimately shut down in 2009.
You would be surprised that a law firm could produce a newsletter that was so not filled with legalese, but given that they refer to themselves as “MoFo” maybe it isn’t all that surprising. The newsletter is very relevant for those looking to keep up with the latest legal trends in social media. For example, did you know that the Securities and Exchange Commission is considering whether to implement an exemption for crowdfunding operations from registering and other securities laws? Or that patients who want to post online about their experience with their doctors can run afoul of copyright laws? These are just some of the other articles that can be found in the copy of the firm’s latest issue of Socially Aware, as their newsletter is called. The PDF link to it is above and you’ll find the timeline chart on page 4.
