Atlanta, Georgia, February 1996: Tommie Butler launched America’s first social media platform. FREAKNIK.COM was the first to allow internet users to share ideas and convey information, including texts and visuals, without disruption or interference. By April 1996, FREAKNIK.COM had reached thirteen million online users, and an estimated one million people visited the metro Atlanta area by this invitation for the FREAKNIK celebration on the last weekend of April.
The year after, the FREAKNIK.COM social media platform grew exponentially; the following year, online visits reached forty million users. FREAKNIK.COM is the first to use and prove the true potential of digital platform technology, the sharing of ideas and information, text, and visuals, creating virtual communities, and even setting up the potential to reach global audiences; and had a considerable influence on hip-hop culture and rap music.
FREAKNIK.COM affected not just Atlanta’s music, film, and media industries. In the spring of 1996, she was released to Deloitte Touche Consulting (today, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited) its comprehensive proprietary report of Metro-Atlanta’s public transportation system road and rail citywide, including all private and public vehicular parking facilities (proving the issues of lack of traffic control were dirty politics inspired). The report’s release cemented all remaining opposition to the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Committee Summer Olympic Games bid.
Historically, It is misleading to credit Myspace, launched in August 2003, as “The First Social Media Platform.” Myspace then only reached one million users after 2004. Even before Facebook and Twitter (X platform), businesses flocked to those social media platforms, propelling their value growth. FREAKNIK.COM could garner half the world’s social media population in a year by today’s ubiquitous internet use.
FREAKNIK.COM, THE REAL SOCIAL MEDIA
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Today, the Internet is ubiquitous, quite different from the 1990s, and so is the world. Worldwide, entire populations use smartphones to access the Internet in Asia-Pacific countries, Africa, Latin America, America, and Europe. For the international population under thirty, social media use predominates. Overwhelmingly, America is at the forefront of social media use; those under thirty use smartphones, at least 84 percent. In emerging and developing economies, half or more of the younger adults use smartphones to access social media. Worldwide, the more educated you are, the higher your income, and the more likely you are to assess social media using smartphones.
Even lower-income economies are increasingly adopting smartphones and social media in new ways. Internationally, smartphone users use social media to view and share art, music, and culture, to express and share opinions, and to post stridently social and political views, regardless of the ideological spectrum. Interestingly, people who use social media to post about issues are more likely to see democracy as an effective way to influence policy decisions, raise awareness, change minds, and create attention to critical issues. In the past, everything was about targeting demographic numbers; that’s old school. Today’s far more productive collecting and interpreting analytical data- attitudes, values, lifestyles, motivations, opinions, dislikes, and wants – is what matters. It measures and finds macro and micro adjustments in line production, affects audience development message strategies, delivers proof of values, and offers more action options.
Today, being competitive in social media means listening to, interpreting, and reporting social algorithms (hashtags, tweets, retweets, and other insights) critical to understanding their overriding importance and meaning, whether client or audience. Social algorithm reporting enables adapting and scaling programming in response to the performance of social profiles and posts. These social algorithms can compile essential data into distinct reports for stakeholders or customers. Reports customized to target comments, visualize graphs, and chart emerging data matching individualized needs. Even its generalization can show Competitor Analysis or Strategic Brand Mentions — of what’s Happening in real-time.
FREAKNIK.COM is coming; it’s programming — Advent-guard, minimalist, guerilla, investigative, journalistic, studio, field, network, independent, stage, public, academic, and public access – addresses fresh, unscripted, outside-the-box interests—the crucial elements to making authentic, not pseudo-social media. Ingredients are universal to jazz, rhythm and blues, funk, disco, hip-hop, rap, basketball, Indigenous art, and fashion. FREAKNIK.COM will bridge cultural barriers, reach every foreign shore, and be welcomed multi-generationally, crossing every country circling the globe. FREAKNIK.COM will bring, will be, will be received by the world, more critically crucial than when FREAKNIK.COM first elevated Atlanta to the Internet, to the nation, and the world, elevating America’s Historically Black Colleges (HBCs), its Civil Rights legacy, and the complicated truth of FREAKNIK.
ADDENDUM
FREAKNIK.COM, THE REAL SOCIAL MEDIA
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FREAKNIK.COM is more diverse, distinct, and accessible worldwide with more exciting content than all the others:
Exploding News and Information: Coverage of things of interest around the corner, nationwide, and worldwide, putting local communities on the map.
The Content Makers: Meet authors, filmmakers, playwriters, and creators.
Hard-Knows: Hard-hitting ground-level exploration of things in and out of the headlines.
Fresh, Fly, Fabulous, Funky (FFFF): an exploration of fashion, review, and inside industry stories.
Power and Influence: How brands influence the world.
Planet Help: Exploring Cause and Effect of climatic and environmental issues for vulnerable communities.
Before Scene: The Inside Exploration of the creative and production process before
Performance or exhibition.
In Your Hand: Exploring the vote at home and elsewhere.
Lost To Oblivion: The making and erasing of your American history.
Funny is Funny: Making funny, truth, history, and comedy culture.
Roots of Success: True inspirational, fact-based stories of people who overcame disadvantages and tremendous obstacles and achieved extraordinary success.
More….