Know about 16th century Facebook

New Delhi: The idea of creating networks of members and sharing information dates back to the 16th century.Italian Academie saw young scholars create nicknames for themselves and develop emblems and mottoes to form groups with which they exchanged information.According to researchers from Royal Holloway university, our obsession with social networking is not exclusive to the 21st century.This fact was discovered during a £1,130,000 collaborative research project between Royal Holloway, the British Library and Reading University, in which a team of academics are cataloguing and investigating the works of the Italian Academies, dating from 1525 to 1700. The project provides information about the academies, their members, publications, activities and emblems.In the 16th and 17th centuries, scholars participated in similar activities using yearbooks, letters, volumes and speeches to communicate their points. They even used nicknames, mottoes and logos to represent themselves while forming groups and sharing their music, poetry and writings with one another.Researchers were surprised to realise just how similar the activities of these 16th and 17th century scholars were with society today.“Just as we create user names for our profiles on Facebook and Twitter and create circles of friends on Google plus, these scholars created nicknames, shared - and commented on - topical ideas, the news of the day, and exchanged poems, plays and music,” said Professor Jane Everson. “It may have taken a little longer for this to be shared without the internet, but through the creation of yearbooks and volumes of letters and speeches, they shared the information of the day.”