Social Media is Older than the WWW?

This is more of a note to myself to remember to look into Dr. Rosenblatt's idea that social networks existed long before the World Wide Web. I remember being a little confused by this in class once, but now I have a better understanding of what that means.

I just read something that Dr. Rosenblatt posted to his blog that was quite frankly, amazing. It was a memo from Milton John Kleim, a member of the Aryan Resistance, a white supremacist movement in the U.S., on using social networks to their advantage. Disregarding who actually wrote it and the context of the memo, it was written back in 1998 and includes some of the same strategies for using social networks that were outlined in the Person to Person report!

Kleim talks about using USENET, an old online discussion forum, to spread their message. He advocates moving beyond their own social networks into others, warns against spamming, suggests interacting with those who express interest in their cause immediately, and promotes contacting members of the networks with some regularity.

Perhaps Dr.R is right -- this "new technology" isn't so new!