I think your history of social media starts later then mine. My first encounter was with the IRC, talking to strangers was literally the point. I was 12 and had

I think your history of social media starts later then mine. My first encounter was with the IRC, talking to strangers was literally the point. I was 12 and had a lot of fun with my friends pretending to be older, MSN Messenger came later, it was invite only (sorta) but we still found ways to use it to talk to strangers. MySpace was optimized to follow your friends, but almost everybody that used it used it to expand their social network outside of people we knew in the real world (MySpace was amazing btw.) Then came facebook. It went even harder then MySpace in connecting you with your friends, but still almost everybody used it outside their real world friends. Twitter sort of took social media back to the beginning before Messenger and to the IRC in strangers being your primary audience.