Using an evolutionary perspective to tell a history of internet conversation media

In this chapter we (re) tell the history of each conversation medium from an evolutionary perspective. The conceptual framework that we presented in the previous chapters was what guided the researches we did to tell these histories.

The taxonomy presented in Chapter 2 organized and delimited the histories that needed to be told in this chapter, because each conversation medium defines an ecosystem (Chapter 5) where systems compete among themselves for users and where this competition leads to evolution. That’s why we organized and analyzed the evolutionary history of the systems of each conversation medium in particular and described it in a specific section. In a few cases, we preferred to tell the history of two conversation media in a single section, when the development of a medium is too intertwined with the development of another.

As discussed in Chapter 3 on Evolution, the innovative features of a system are what contribute to the evolution of the medium. We don’t give emphasis to the creator of each system, because in an evolutionary perspective we recognize that systems are the result of years of technological and cultural evolutions that unfolded until the moment they were released. We do recognize that a few systems contributed to the evolution of a medium when they included innovative features that influenced subsequent systems. That’s why we included a timeline showing the features that were developed throughout time and that influenced the development of the contemporary systems of each conversation medium. Using this approach, we aim to show that current systems didn’t come out of nowhere and that no system is absolutely original; they were all influenced by previous systems.

A system can even contain innovative features, but, if it doesn’t become known, developers will probably not get familiarized with them and, as a consequence, they won’t be able to influence the following generation of systems. So, we tell the history of each conversation medium through the most popular systems, the ones that were the most influent in their time, and that’s because, as discussed in Chapter 4 on Selection, besides technical development, the evolutionary process takes place through the choices of users (social selection).

It wasn’t easy to identify the most popular systems and their innovative features, especially considering that the oldest systems are no longer in use and weren’t even experienced by us, the authors of this book. This type of work is made more difficult due to the fact that there is little data about these systems, particularly the ones from a time when the coverage of a specialized media dealing with releases and analyses of new features didn’t exist. In some cases, we had to look for traces of systems in books and articles, like paleontologists studying fossils as evidence of beings that were alive in a different era. Regarding the cultural and technological evolutions, the specialist in the case would be the archeologist, who studies the cultures and ways of life of ancient societies. The summary we present in this chapter is an embryonic work that will later need to be studied in greater depth by the archeologists of digital society.

We don’t presume to cover all the histories of conversation media, and the systems listed here are the ones that were released until publication time. By taking the chance of telling these histories, we aim to show the validity and utility of an evolutionary perspective in an analysis of the conversation systems and services that are the bases of cyberculture.

There’s no linearity in the histories of each medium. We designed this chapter so that you could choose which conversation media you would like to know a little better:

email (electronic mail)
discussion list
forum
instant messenger
chat
SMS and group messages
blog and microblog
video call and videoconference
voice call (phone conversation) and audioconference

Email (electronic mail)

The email is an asynchronous conversation medium between two (or few) interlocutors that exchange elaborate text messages. It was developed based on a metaphor of the exchange of letters done by postal mail; its developers even asked permission to the United States Postal Services to use the term “mail”. The way of writing email messages was also influenced by letter-writing culture, because an email frequently begins with a greeting to the receiver and ends with a goodbye, as in a traditional letter.

Postal Mail

The practice of sending written documents to people who are geographically distant probably goes back to the invention of writing; however, records of the first systems organized for sending documents are from 2,400 B.C. Egypt. The modern postal system was established in the 19th and 20th centuries with the development of means of transportation such as railways, ships and planes, which shortened the time of travel.

The computer, originally designed to make calculations, was first seen as a technology that could be used for conversation back in the 1960s. Users that shared the same mainframe computer, through the operating system CTSS (Compatible Time-Sharing System), had access to a shared directory. A few files were left in the shared directory so that a specific user could read them later. This practice resulted in the development of the MAIL command for sending messages among users that shared the same computer, and this was the beginning of the development of the email.

With the popularization of the email and the increasing abandonment of letter-writing as a means of correspondence, having an email address began to be a necessity even for website registration. In the 1990s and until the mid-2000s, the email was used for several purposes, such as sending videos, images, and informal messages. With the popularization of social networks, video sharing systems such as YouTube and other conversation media such as the SMS and the instant messenger, the email is starting to be used more and more for work-related issues and private conversations.

With the evolution of systems that implement the email and due to the influence of other conversation media, there has been a recent cultural change in the exchange of this type of message. For example, a few email messages are now written without the opening and closing typical of traditional letters that influenced the initial development of this conversation medium. In part, this practice is an influence of the culture of informality that can be seen in other conversation media such as the instant messenger, but it’s also a result of the functionality conversation history being presented along with the new message, giving the impression of an endless conversation, which makes it unnecessary to say hello and goodbye with each message. More recently, a few users have been choosing to cut out the automatic transcription of the previous message, since recovering the conversation history is so easy that the transcription serves no purpose.

Popular systems that have contributed with innovative functionalities and influenced the development of contemporary systems that implement this conversation medium are represented in the timeline of the evolution of the email, presented in the following illustration.

A few specific purposes that gave a direction to the evolution of the email:

User identification: In an asynchronous conversation medium for the exchange of private messages, as is the case of the email, the interlocutor must be identified by an address so that messages will arrive at their destination. In the first solutions developed by CTSS systems, which allowed the exchange of messages among users of a same computer, developers used the name of the receiver in the message filed. The solution used today is the electronic address, implemented in the SNDMSG system from the ARPANet network. Aside from the identification by address, ARPANet systems began including fields for the sender and the receiver along with the message, influenced by the information contained in the envelopes of postal mail letters.

Message elaboration: Letters are usually elaborate and, in a few cases, such as that of the postal card, contain attached images. In the evolution of the email as the adaptation of postal mail for the conversation through computing, developers gradually added functionalities that allowed the elaboration of the text, such as tools for text formatting and attachment of documents, images and videos.

Access to the message at a later time: As a medium that is meant to be used for asynchronous conversations, the email shouldn’t demand that interlocutors be online at the same time. This problem was solved by the adoption of the POP protocol, which allows each user to read, answer and manage their mail in an exclusive mailbox without needing to be online, which lowered the costs of connection and encouraged the popularization of the conversation medium.

Shortening response time: Because email is an asynchronous medium, the expected response time is of hours and even a few days. In order to shorten this time, the functionality of new message alert was developed. It’s widely used on smartphones, but also present in desktop systems and even employed by other conversation media such as the instant messenger and the SMS.

Making it easy for users to find the messages they want: A user can receive up to hundreds of messages a day, including unwanted ones, such as spam. In order to make organization and the search for a given message easier, throughout time developers included functionalities such as the classification of messages by folder, message search and message organization within a same conversation.

Discussion list

The discussion list is an asynchronous conversation medium for discussion among many interlocutors that send elaborate text messages, organized chronologically (by list). The discussion list was developed as an adaptation of the use of email for group discussion in the ARPANet, based on the program SNDMSG, released in 1972. From the point of view of the user, the discussion list is an electronic email address to which one sends a message that is redistributed to all registered members. In general, a discussion list gathers people who are interested in a given issue.

A few specific purposes that gave a direction to the evolution of the discussion list:

Making moderation easier: The list is meant to be used for discussions. Because, in discussions, it’s common for participants to exchange insults or send messages that aren’t relevant to the theme of the list or group, the developers of discussion systems had to create ways of managing lists, giving moderators functionalities such as the exclusion of members and the inclusion of other moderators. On the other hand, developers of systems such as the LISTSERV tried to make the inclusion and exclusion of members easier, giving moderators the option of allowing members to register automatically.

Integration with discussion groups: Ever since the development of the web, lists were integrated with group discussion systems, such as Yahoo Groups and Google Groups. The members of the groups formed in these systems consult and answer messages both through the website and their email account.

Forum

The forum is an asynchronous conversation medium for discussion among many interlocutors that exchange elaborate text messages, organized by topic. It’s similar to the discussion list because both are meant to be used in asynchronous discussions among many people, but while in the list messages are organized by list (chronologically), in the forum, messages are organized hierarchically (in topics).

The forum was developed in the 1970s in order to allow groups of people who were separate, both in space and time, to have discussions through computer networks. The development of this medium was influenced by the bulletin board and by an experience that took place in the late 1940s connecting telex machines. The bulletin board also inspired the name of another group discussion system, the BBS (Bulletin Board System). One famous BBS was a community named The Well (Whole Earth Lectronic Link), released in 1985, which originated the term virtual community.

Bulletin board

Used on the walls of schools, supermarkets and other public places so that people could post notes, ads and other information of interest to the community.

Connected telex machines

The concept of a medium for asynchronous conversation already existed in 1948, as a way of allowing communication about the shipment of supplies to West Berlin by the allies in the beginning of the Cold War against the Soviet Union. The attempt of connecting telex machines of several countries was a failure due to the difficulty people had in communicating in several languages at the same time

From the mid-2000s, with the popularity of social media, more specifically of social networks such as MySpace and Facebook, forums began to be integrated as services in these systems, in communities or groups, along with other conversation media. Since hypertext made it easy to surf on the web, forums could be developed to support a large structure of topics, divided in several levels. Specialized systems were released to allow a wide variety of discussions within a common theme.

In current social network systems, the forum is implemented in communities or interest groups. The organization of messages in the forums of these social network systems, such as Facebook, is not structured in several hierarchical levels, as in systems that are specifically forum systems, such as PhpBB and vBulletin.

A few specific purposes that gave a direction to the evolution of the forum:

Access to the forum: asynchronous conversation systems meant for group discussions have contributed for the formation of communities with common interests. In forums, unlike in emails, messages are published by all members in a common space. Because it’s a common space, with easy access, developers implemented functionalities in order to control that access and the registration of members, just like in discussion lists.

Organizing messages in a topic structure: In order to promote discussions focused on given themes, systems organized message exchange within a hierarchical classification system for the organization of the conversation by topic, making consultation easier. The forum structure was developed throughout time to promote debates, including within a same topic, with the visualization of the chain of answers to messages. This characteristic was influenced by bulletin boards, in which people pin notes above other notes as answers.

Instant messenger

The instant messenger is a synchronous conversation medium in which two interlocutors exchange short text messages. This conversation medium is as old as the electronic email. Both are older than computer networks and were implemented in the mid-1960s in a mainframe multiuser operating system. The first instant messenger systems already implemented some of the main functionalities found in contemporary systems: in order not to interrupt the activity the user is performing when they’re called for a conversation, the notification that appears is peripheral: a message in the bottom of the screen so that the person can accept and begin the conversation, refuse it by saying they’re busy or simply ignore it.

The same developers of MIT’s Computer Center that created the MAIL command to send a text message to a mail box in a CTTS introduced the WRITE command to send instant messages. The command had a wide acceptance, with over 1000 MIT CTSS users using it in the 1970s to coordinate work and share information.

< Evolution of the instant messenger
Messages with expiration date
Availability of media such as the messenger or the SMS according to context of use
Instant messages in mobile devices
Integration with social network systems
Conversations along with email messages
Connection through the web of different instant messenger systems
Interoperability among different instant messenger systems
Integration with the email
Personalization
Emoji, Emoticons and avatars
Contact list with availability indication
Integration with VoIP
Ability to edit and share drawings
Offline message transmission
User catalogue
Screen update
Conversation among more than two users
Separation of messages of each interlocutor
Exchange of text messages while online
Specification of who received messages
Visualization of users connected to the system
Visualization of the other user’s screen
Session between one user connected to the local system and another in a remote computer
Ability to send messages of up to 120 characters to be shown in another user’s terminal
Reading and execution of terminal’s command lines>

A few specific purposes that gave a direction to the evolution of the instant messenger:

Making access easier and realizing who’s online: In the 1970s it was already possible to identify which of the interlocutors were connected to an instant messenger system. With the arrival of the web, functionalities such as the contact lists and information about the presence and availability of interlocutors were developed.

Making the coordination of the synchronous conversation easier: The first solutions still didn’t allow a conversation that came next to being in real time, but demanded that both interlocutors be connected at the same time in order to exchange messages. With real time, character-by-character transmission, the challenge then was to organize separately the texts that each interlocutor typed – this solution, however, is disappearing. With time, systems began informing the moment when the interlocutor is typing the message (before sending it) in order to give visibility to the process of message elaboration.

Leading to informal conversations: The informality of conversations has increased, in messengers, after the release of systems with a graphic interface that allowed users to represent different emotions through emoticons. A few systems, when they show the sent message, automatically transform a combination of characters into an emoticon image.

Chat

The chat is a synchronous conversation medium for discussion among a small group in which all exchange short text messages. The development of the chat was influenced by the arrival of computer networks, which allowed conversation among many interlocutors, and by conference systems connected via phone lines. After entering a chat, the interlocutor usually talks with strangers and uses a nickname so as not to expose their real identity. Currently, through social network systems, the chat takes place among members of a group or a selection of online friends grouped by the user themselves.

A few specific purposes that gave a direction to the evolution of the chat:

Allowing synchronous conversations among different groups: With the popularization of computers and networks, developers realized the necessity of allowing multiple simultaneous conversations. Influenced by amateur radio, a few chat systems divided conversations into channels, that later were called chatrooms. Each channel or room was identified by a specific theme or group.

Allowing the anonymity of the interlocutor in the conversation: Up until the beginning of the 1980s, chat systems demanded that the user gave their real identity. With the popularization of this medium, the conversations began taking place among strangers. In order to preserve user anonymity, solutions such as the use of nicknames and avatars were developed. However, anonymity had negative consequences, such as the abuse of hostile messages, which made moderating rooms harder. With the popularization of social network systems, chat systems currently group, in general, people who know each other and are identified by their profile.

SMS and Group Messages

The SMS (Short Message Service) is an asynchronous conversation medium for two interlocutors that exchange short text messages. It’s similar to the email in that it’s also an asynchronous conversation medium established through the exchange of private text messages, but different in that it limits the size of the message to 160 characters. The SMS was originally developed to allow the exchange of text messages via mobile phone.

The 2010s saw the development of smartphone apps that, besides implementing the SMS, began to also allow group conversations through the asynchronous exchange of short text messages. With the fast popularization of these systems, which presented never before seen conversation characteristics, occurred what we recognize as the development a more recent conversation medium, defined as “group messages” in this book. The group messages medium is similar to the discussion list in that it allows asynchronous group discussions, but different in that the messages are short.

The first experiences of conversation media that allowed users to send short text messages over a distance began in the 18th century with the development of the optical telegraph, which made remote asynchronous communication faster, being followed by the invention of the electrical telegraph, which used Morse code to send messages in the second half of the 19th century, and the telegraph with radio wave transmission in the end of the 19th century.

Telegraph (end of the 18th century)

The telegraph, used since the 1840s, influenced experiments that resulted in the telephone, used since around the 1870s. Graham Bell’s idea was to transmit by telegraph multiple messages by the same wire at the same time. However, the experiments with the conveyance of sound via electric wiring surpassed expectations and resulted in a new communication medium.

Throughout the 20th century, fixed telephony progressed so much that most households had their own telephone. The emergence of communication by telephone wire and radio waves inspired new communication media for the long-distance conveyance of text messages, such as the Telex in the 1930s, and the fax, the teletext and the videotext starting in the 1970s. Ever since the 1990s, these communication media began to converge and transform into internet conversation media.

In spite of the fact that the first experiments began in the 1940s and 1950s, the first prototypes of mobile phones to make successful calls were only developed in the 1970s, the first mobile telephony networks only became operational in the early 1980s, and the first commercial call was only made in 1983. Before mobile phone lines, amateur radio was the technology used to keep in contact with people who were away from home or from the work environment. However, the growing number of users for a small number of frequencies resulted in interferences in the communication and, with time, many users migrated to mobile telephony.

The first mobile phones were analog devices, and the market offered technologies and protocols which were incompatible. In order to establish a standard for mobile telephony, in 1982 there was a meeting of a committee called Groupe Spécial Mobile (GSM), mainly composed by French telecommunication engineers. In 1987, an agreement among 13 European countries resulted in the creation of a mobile telephony network based on open standards developed by the GSM and common to all signatory countries. One of the ideas put forth by the GSM was that the mobile telephony network should support and integrate different services involving voice, data and text transmission. The SMS was a suggestion based on researches made by the GSM. Its purpose was conveying text messages via telephone wires. In order to achieve this, it was necessary to develop technologies and establish standards and a limit of 160 characters per message. Other communication media, such as the Telex and postcards also restricted message space, so developers didn’t consider that the character limit of the SMS would discourage its use. None of the elements that constituted the idea of the SMS brought by developers to the GSM was new: neither the concept of sending text messages by mobile phone, nor the transmission of data, nor the integration of services. The novelty was the combination of these concepts in a single technology.

The development of the SMS took a while; the first message was sent through the GSM Vodafone network from a personal computer to an Orbitel 901 mobile phone in 1992.

The popularization of the SMS took place when it was adopted by teenagers in the mid-1990s, after they were allowed by law to acquire mobile phones. Unlike their parents, used to sending elaborate messages, younger people want a faster way to communicate and the character limit imposed by the SMS was well accepted.

The evolution of the keyboards on mobile phones was fundamental to make the use of the SMS easier and increase its popularity. In the 2000s, the evolution of the SMS continued to be influenced by the evolution of technologies meant for mobile phones. Native SMS apps on smartphones began having to deal with the competition of over the top (OTT) message services, such as WhatsApp, WeChat and Viber, which, besides the SMS, offer other media such as instant messengers, chats and video calls and don’t require the extra cost per message sent charged by the mobile telephone company. These apps also developed an adaptation of the SMS for the group exchange of short text messages in asynchronous conversations, which characterized them as a new medium, called “group messages” in this book. Facebook also implements these characteristics in its Messenger service. These conversation characteristics are not present in previous media: the discussion list allows the exchange of asynchronous group text messages, but wasn’t developed specifically for short messages; the chat also allows the exchange of group text messages, but was developed to establish synchronous conversations. Due to its fast popularization, we recognize “group messages” as a new conversation medium. In group messages apps, the user invites their contacts into the conversation and can, in some cases, name the group. The creator of the group becomes its administrator and is the one responsible for adding other members.

Popular systems that have contributed with innovative functionalities and influenced the development of contemporary systems that implement these conversation media are represented in the timeline of the evolution of the SMS and of group messages, presented in the following illustration.

A few specific purposes that gave a direction to the evolution of the SMS:

Transmitting messages via wireless telephone lines: The SMS was influenced by the evolution of the transmission of text messages over a distance, begun with the development of the telegraph and other technologies such as the fax, the Telex and the teletext. With the development of mobile telephony, the challenge became the transmission of text messages over long distances without the need of wires. The solution included the establishment of standards, the development of technologies and the limitation of the number of character in each message. With the successive generations of mobile telephones, message transmission became faster and faster, also allowing the attachment of multimedia files.

Making it easier to type messages: The SMS is used in contexts that require fast typing, because users often use the systems in situations when they can’t lose time in sending messages. One of the difficulties faced is that mobile phones have small dimensions and, therefore, their keyboards also have smaller keys than those in personal computers. As a solution, developers began offering functionalities such as the option of auto-completion during typing and the exhibition of keys according with use finality.

The purpose that gave a direction to the evolution of group messages:

Making it easier to exchange short group messages via smartphone: With the popularization of SMS services, smartphones, and, particularly over the top (OTT) systems, which don’t require payment to telephone companies and integrate several conversation media, developers came up with functionalities that allow group conversations with characteristics that are similar to those established via SMS. They added functionalities for the creation of the group, for member invitation and for group administration.

6.7 – Blog and Microblog

The term blog, which is the contraction of the original term weblog (web + log), is an asynchronous conversation medium in which an author posts elaborate text messages that are open to comment. The posts, which often contain links and multimedia content, are recorded and listed, beginning by the most recent. Each post can receive comments, which promotes the conversation between authors and their readers.

The microblog, in its turn, is a speciation of the blog meant to send short messages. The blog and the microblog are different from other asynchronous group conversation media such as the forum and the discussion list due to the relationship established among interlocutors: in the blog and the microblog, messages are posted exclusively by the author, and these posts can receive comments from readers/followers, which makes the conversation centered on the author.

During the past century, the spaces used to publish articles, news stories and other type of content for large audiences were newspapers, magazines and other printed media in which the content was selected by editors. In mass communication media, there’s no response from the audience, no interaction between authors and readers (except through other media, such as letters written by readers commenting the content of the previous publication; but even the letters published in the following edition are selected by editors). The development of the blog led to two important changes: any person with internet access could publish content without the need of editorial filter and interact directly with readers through comments about each publication.

Two trends in the use of blogs are the integration with social networks and the use in smartphones. Facebook, for example, allows an author to install a plugin in their blog to get comments from members of the social network in each publication. The use in smartphones influenced the development of a variation of the blog, the moblog (mobile + blog). With the moblog, an author can publish content from anywhere using resources of the device, such as a digital camera to capture images and publish them immediately.

Other variations of the blog were developed throughout its evolution, such as the photolog (for publishing photos), the videolog (videos), the audioblog and the podcast (audio) and the microblog, which became so popular that it began to be considered a new conversation medium.

If, in the beginning, the blog was an adaptation of the first websites, the microblog in its turn was an adaptation of the blog, initially developed as an attempt to adapt the characteristics of the blog for the use in smartphones, which requires quick editing. The microblog is used to post about day-to-day activities, give brief news about a subject or searching for people who are commenting about a given subject in a given moment. The author is followed by people who are interested in what they write.

The success of the microblog is related to how easy it is to publish, comment and search for short messages; and to the fact that it satisfies a need that wasn’t met by blogs (which promote the publication of elaborate messages). Microblog users in general publish several messages a day and, when they have several followers, they quickly get comments, which makes this medium have characteristics that are closer to those of synchronous conversation media.

The interactivity that blogs allowed influenced the development of social media, which characterized a significant change in the use of the web. It stopped being a platform mostly used for the search for content and became a platform mostly used for conversation and social relationships. The microblog became one of the main conversation media in social network systems, allowing users to follow the day-to-day activities of friends in their social network. Their integration in systems, websites and apps, as well as their diversified use in fields such as journalism and education, have been some of the trends observed in the evolution of blogs and microblogs.

Popular systems that have contributed with innovative functionalities and influenced the development of contemporary systems that implement these conversation media are represented in the timeline of the evolution of the blog and the microblog, presented in the following illustration.

A few specific purposes that gave a direction to the evolution of the blog:

Posting elaborate messages for crowds without intermediaries: The blog is an adaptation for digital support of printed communication media meant for publication, such as books, newspapers, magazines and personal journals. In order to allow the elaboration of messages, developers added functionalities to include photos and videos and perfected text editing tools. A few systems even became specialized in the publication of a specific type of content, generating sub-kinds of blogs, such as photologs and videologs. The blog allows any person who has interest and access to a computer to become an author without need of the editorial industry. A few authors acquired fame and millions of readers/followers.

Allowing reader feedback: Books, magazines, newspapers and other printed communication media don’t allow reader feedback. Blog systems developed ways to supply this feedback to the authors of posts. In the first blog systems, comments were included through the use of third-party programs. With time, specialized systems began implementing comments as a native functionality. Today, many blog systems such as WordPress offer both their own comment functionality and the possibility of including Facebook’s comment plugin.

Making it easy to follow posts: the blog is a public access space that belongs to an author. In the first blog systems, in order to access posts, one had to visit the blog. When systems specializing in blogs were released, they developed functionalities that made it easier to follow new posts from other places, such as feed readers, which gathered in a single place the posts of blogs followed by users without them having to visit each blog individually. In order to find a blog’s posts, besides search tools, one can use lists that organize posts by publication date. In order to make the search and the identification of the publication easier, information such as the date and the name of the author were added. In order to make it easier for users to answer or share a specific post, developers came up with the permalink, which is a link for a blog post.

Using posts about similar themes to form a community: Ever since the first implementations of blogs, before there were specialized systems, there was the initiative of forming communities around blogs, mainly around a common interest. Authors made lists with links to other blogs they knew, a functionality that was adapted in systems the specialize in blog editing with the name blogroll. When these specialized systems were released, the intention of forming communities continued and their popularization constituted the blogosphere, the community made up of all blogs.

A few specific purposes that gave a direction to the evolution of the microblog:

Promoting the posting of short messages: The SMS, whose character limit per message is a result of the limitations of mobile phone technology, influenced the development of the microblog. A few systems, such as Twitter, limit the number of characters, while Facebook’s microblog supplies a small-sized box for typing, inducing users to write short messages.

Following an author’s content updates: System developers that implemented the microblog were influenced by the functionality of feed readers, present in blogs. In order to make it easier for users not to miss a microblog’s posts, the following functionalities were developed: follow user; list of authors and search mechanism to find the person one wishes to follow; newsfeed, which gathers the updates the user follows; and notifications, which alert users about the updates from their favorite authors.

Making it easy for a post to be found: The search engine is not always adequate to find posts about a given subject on microblogs, given the fact that new messages are constantly being written. In order to solve this problem, systems like Twitter and Facebook employed hashtags, keywords that the author of the message uses to classify, index and recover content.

Allowing post feedback: Aside from comments, other ways for the reader/follower to give their feedback about each post were developed, such as Facebook’s “Like” button, the possibility of including a post in Twitter’s favorites, or giving a post a certain number of stars. These functionalities are also useful to indicate the popularity and reputation of a post.

Giving a post publicity: The microblog achieved something that wasn’t possible in other conversation media: spreading news rapidly to a crowd. Before, this ability was restricted to mass communication media, such as television and radio. Through the microblog, using functionalities such as “Share” and “Retweet”, viral publicity became possible: the ability of showing a message to millions of people even if the author has few followers. Both Twitter and Facebook also implemented a way of calling other users into the conversation, which is typing their name and turning it into a link, which causes a notification to appear in the page of the person whose name was typed.

Videoconference and Video call

The videoconference is a synchronous conversation medium with audio and video transmission for small groups. Videoconference systems are mainly used in remote meetings between companies or teams of a same company, eliminating the necessity to travel and optimizing work time.

The video call is a synchronous conversation medium with audio and video transmission restricted to two interlocutors.

The development of the videoconference and the video call established through computing is related to several experiments with telephony combined with video made throughout the 20th century. The concept of a telephone combined with the use of video was proposed only a few years after the release of the telephone, in the end of the 19th century, and it was soon mentioned in popular magazines and science fiction magazines. In the 20th century, several films, books and even cartoons showed forms of interpersonal communication by video. Even Graham Bell, who patented the invention of the telephone, predicted that someday man would be able to communicate by phone visualizing the image of his interlocutors. However, these ideas could only be tested after experiments that resulted in the first television sets, made in the 1920s and 1930s. Even after that, until the 1980s, they were made via analog transmissions.

Video telephone system of the German post office (1930s)

The first public video telephone service was released in the second half of the 1930s by the German post office, connecting Berlin to several cities, and remained operational between 1936 and 1940. The system allowed person-to-person communication, using televisions installed in public telephone booths that were connected by coaxial cable or by radio.

During the 1950s, several experiments were made using conventional phone lines for video transmission. However, these attempts failed due to the low quality of the image and the lack of efficient technologies for video compression. With the perception that the technology was still far from the possibility of a commercial release, the videoconference and the video call were restricted to internal use by the companies developing them. One of the difficulties in transmitting audio and video with quality was a result of the use of analog phone networks. Only in the 1980s it became possible to transmit audio and video integrated services digital networks (ISDN) with sufficient quality to ensure a minimum commercial success. With the advance of technologies such as the Internet Protocol (IP) and the development of more efficient technologies for video compression, videoconference systems became more accessible to the public.

With the development of new standards, webcams that cost less or came embedded in computers, the availability of free systems and the evolution of stream quality with broadband, videoconference systems became common for uses such as interactive classes of long-distance classes.

The evolution of mobile telephony also influenced the success of video call and video conference systems. Mobile phone support for video communication has existed since the mid-1990s; however, only with 3G and 4G networks, which offer broadband transmission, and with the widespread use of smartphones and tablets, which have wider screens, better resolution, front cameras and a greater number of available apps, did video call and videoconference systems became popular in these devices. In smartphones, video call and videoconference systems are accessed from anywhere with an internet connection and in any situation. Other trends observed from the mid-2000s are the convergence of video call and video conference services in a single system, such as Skype, or as a service implemented on social networks, such as Hangouts on Google+.

For decades, video call and videoconference services were restricted to companies and other institutions. The high cost of these systems, combined with the less than ideal development of the transmission, delayed the popularization of these media. The evolution of the videoconference and the video call shows that, many times, a technology begins to be developed and is even released several years before it can be adopted by the public and have the quality necessary to achieve its purposes. In the case of these conversation media, the period between conceptualization and popularization spanned over a century.

Popular systems that have contributed with innovative functionalities and influenced the development of contemporary systems that implement these conversation media are represented in the timeline of the evolution of the video conference and the video call, presented in the following illustration.

A few specific purposes that gave a direction to the evolution of the video call:

Allowing conversations with audio and video in real time: The concept of video conversation has existed since the 19th century, beginning with the invention of the telephone. However, video conversation could only be established with the desired quality and in real time in the last few years. Solutions found to increase the quality of the transmission were migrating from analog to digital technology and developing ways of compressing video and improving the quality of the distribution (streaming).

Allowing the capture of the image of each interlocutor: The release of the webcam was the factor that propelled the development of digital video call systems and contributed to their popularization. The video call was integrated with instant messenger systems in the 1990s, showing the image of the interlocutor captured by their webcam. With the emergence of smartphones, systems developed for these platforms, such as FaceTime, began using the devices’ own front camera to capture the image of the interlocutor.

Specific purpose that gave a direction to the evolution of the video conference:

Allowing video conversation among several people: In the video call, it’s enough to establish transmission between two interlocutors; on the other hand, in the videoconference, it was necessary to develop access by multiple points and to design interfaces that showed the images of all participants, giving greater prominence to the one speaking at a given moment.

Voice call (phone conversation) and Audioconference

The voice call is a synchronous conversation medium with audio transmission between two interlocutors.

The audioconference is a synchronous conversation medium with audio transmission for small groups.

The development of the audioconference and the voice call comes from the first experiments that resulted in the telephone, in the second half of the 19th century. Synchronous voice communication had been imagined in the 17th century with the first prototypes of what would become the megaphone; however, these technologies were not meant to be used for conversation.

Telephone (end of the 19th century)

The development of the telephone was based on the telegraph, whose success motivated several inventors, politicians and engineers to look for a solution for remote communication through the conveyance of voice messages. The race was won by Graham Bell, who registered the patent and founded the Bell Company to explore the commercial use of the technology. The popularity of the telephone in the United States was mainly driven by the foundation of AT&T (American Telegraph & Telephone), which obtained patents and a monopoly for the expansion and exploration of telephone networks in the country.
During the 20th century, telephone networks were developed and began allowing phone calls between countries that were separated by oceans, satellite transmissions, internet connections and mobile and digital telephony. However, these transmissions still imply a cost for the user, particularly in long-distance calls.

The cost of telephone lines was the main reason for the popularity of shared telephone lines, one of the communication media that were the precursors of the audio conference.

Shared telephone lines (beginning of the 20th century)

Until the Second World War, the shared subscription of a telephone line with neighbors (party line) was the main form of acquisition of telephone services for residential use, particularly in rural areas. In order to differentiate subscribers, operators used different ring tones to call each one. With the shared line it was possible for other subscribers and even the line operator to listen and participate in the conversation of a given subscriber.
The recurring problems of party lines, such as the low sound quality, lack of privacy and busy lines, made it impossible for them to be used by business companies. In spite of a few technological advances during the 1940s and 1950s, such as the direct phone call that could be made without human operators, the first automatic central office that allowed phone conferences was opened only in 1966.

The first step to offer a low cost long-distance telephone service with digital technology, which resulted in the systems that implement the voice call, was the development of the Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) in 1973.

VoIP (1973)

Its development was influenced by the ARPANet and by the idea that sound could be transmitted through high-speed connections, just as email messages; however, its use by the general public was only possible with the popularization of the internet in the 1990s. In the early 2000s, the evolution of systems that implement the voice call continued, with the release of systems that used an analog adapter on a phone connected to a broadband router and a phone socket. Just as the voice call, the VoIP caused a significant cost reduction for the audioconference and the voice call, particularly in long-distance calls.

Just like the videoconference, the audioconference took many years to become popular due to technological limitations, such as the excessive time needed to configure systems, the restriction to the number of participants due to the accumulation of noise in the conversation and the problems in identifying who was speaking.

The use of audioconference systems, even with its limitations, began to increase in the 1980s, due to the need employers had to use telecommunications to establish remote connections with the workplace, because, starting in the 1960s, there was a mass migration to the suburbs, increasing the distance between home and work. With the evolution of technologies, the audioconference also allowed meetings to take place among people in different countries, saving travel expenses.

Until the end of the 1980s, audioconference systems were analog, and often required a human operator. In 1989 the Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) was already available in Germany, allowing conversations with up to three participants. The popularization of digital voice call systems began with the use of the VoIP protocol in systems such as Skype and with the evolution of mobile phones, which went from analog to digital in the 1990s. With the popularity of the web, several systems started to be developed, and the release of the broadband in the 2000s improved the quality of the audio in conference transmissions and allowed the integration of the voice call and the audioconference to other services.

The trend observed in the last few years is the same of most conversation media: the integration with other conversation media in social networks, in specialized conversation systems and in websites with several finalities.

Popular systems that have contributed with innovative functionalities and influenced the development of contemporary systems that implement these conversation media are represented in the timeline of the evolution of the voice call and the audio conference, presented in the following illustration.

A few specific purposes that gave a direction to the evolution of the voice call:

Allowing audio conversation in real time: With digital telephony, developers came up with ways to convert signals and compress audio in order to perform Internet Protocol (IP) transmissions.

Allowing audio conversation with low costs: Digital systems reduced the costs of long-distance telephone calls, particularly after the development of the VoIP, which allowed voice calls to be made through the internet. With systems such as the Viber, which doesn’t require a telephone company, users can make free calls.

Making it easier for people to access their contacts in order to make their calls: With analog phones you have to use paper phone books as an additional resource to remember phone numbers. With digital phones, particularly since the advent of smartphones, contact lists are integrated with the system.

Specific purpose that gave a direction to the evolution of the audioconference:

Allowing audio conversations among several people: The main problem in an audioconference is conversation comprehension, due to the fact that it involves many participants in a flow organization, in which messages are transmitted at the same time. Analog systems like the shared party lines of the beginning of the 20th century solved the problem of participant distinction using different rings to call each line subscriber, but the problem of noise accumulation in the conversation persisted. The solution came with the Meeting Table system, which identified by name the person speaking to the other conversation participants. With digital telephony and the improvement in audio transmission, systems began allowing conversations with over six participants.

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