Those in late Roman Republic created distributed communities that, according to Tom Standage, were ancient predecessors of social media. In the particular, the elite wrote each other a lot, copied and shared quotes from one another. Such exchanges thrived because there was a cheap way to spread them, that is, via slaves (cf. broadband) and also people were literate.
Standage's study under girds my longstanding thesis that Facebook, for example, is not so much a social innovation, as a technology one. Interacting, conversing and networking are part-and-parcel of the human phenomena, undoubtedly animal life in general, too. So social has been around for hundreds of thousands of years. Mark Zuckerberg and his mates simply provided us with the platform to raise and extend social phenomena.
I like this interview with Standage, because it sheds good light on the enduring essence of what we know so well now.
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