The Technical and Social History of Software Engineering

Chapter 9. 2000 to 2009: The Rise of Social Networks and Economic Crises

From 2000 to 2009, social networks such as Facebook and Twitter would enroll most of the planet’s population to create the largest human online networks in history. By the end of this decade, many people would have more virtual friends on social networks than real friends in their daily lives. They would also spend more time communicating with virtual friends via social networks and smartphone texting than in actual face-to-face or even phone conversations. This was also a major decade for computer games with the emergence of more than 50 game companies.

One interesting new form of research was created in this decade. The advent of the Wikipedia encyclopedia demonstrated ...