This article looks at how paper-based communication can be described a early forms of social media. Quite an interesting read:
“A study conducted by Julia Gillen and Nigel Hall from the Lancaster and Manchester Metropolitan Universities concluded that “the low price and efficiency of the Edwardian postcard as an informal written communication technology was not equalled subsequently until the 21st Century.” Postcards writing often lacked punctuation, included abbreviated words and incomplete sentences. Like Twitter which restricts users to 140 characters per ‘tweet,’ postcards writers only had a limited amount of space to pen a message.”