In celebration of the Advertising Research Foundations 75th anniversary, the folks over at PeopleBrowsr (utilising the talents of artist Adam Long) have created an image-rich history of social networking, told somewhat uniquely via cartoon strips.

Beginning with the Twitter-esque Notificator, which introduced social networking way back in the 1930s, the presentation traces the development of new media from Compuserve in the late 1960s, the first bulletin board systems, the invention of the World Wide Web and AOL’s instant messenger, through to Friendster, MySpace, Facebook and Twitter, all the way up to recent social phenoms Charlie Sheen and Rebecca Black.

The slides also take a look at the impact social media has made on brands and branding in the last few years. Definitely worth a few minutes of your time.