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Morse Code
Samuel Morse sent the first electronic message with a series of electronic dots and dashes tapped out by hand on a telegraph machine. He sent the message from Baltimore to Washington, D.C. with the words "What hath God wrought?" With this type of technology there were early versions of LOL and OMG: “G M” meant “good morning,” “S F D,” meant “stop for dinner. -
Compuserve
Jeff Wilkins founded CompuServe Information Service in Columbus, Ohio, in 1969, making it one of the earliest consumer online services. When personal computer users first had access to electronic mail and technical support in 1979, it was CompuServe. It gained notoriety for the various innovations it pioneered, such as its chat feature, forums for a range of subjects, software downloads for numerous operating systems, and its extensive library of online games. -
BBS
Ward Christensen and Randy Suess developed the Computerized Bulletin Board System (CBBS), the first BBS, in 1978. A modem and a phone line were both required for users to connect to the system. At the time, the system's speed was severely constrained by the fact that modems operated at 100 or 300 baud (1 baud = 1 bit per second). -
America Online (AOL)
A real predecessor to the social networking sites we use today, were born under the AOL brand. AOL created by William von Meister was the Internet before the Internet in many ways and for many people, and its member-created communities—complete with searchable "Member Profiles," in which users would list relevant information about themselves—were undoubtedly its most intriguing and innovative aspect. -
Classmates.com
It was quickly demonstrated by Classmates.com that the concept of a virtual reunion was a good one. Early users were able to find long-lost grade school friends, despite the fact that they were unable to create profiles. It became popular almost right away, and the service currently has 57 million registered users. It was founded in 1995 by Randy Conrads as Classmates Online, Inc. -
Six Degrees
The first social networking site was Six Degrees. Andrew Weinreich created the website, which transformed well-liked features such as profiles, friends lists, and school affiliations into a single service.
The website had millions of registered users, networks were constrained because there weren't many people using the Internet. -
Rye
In the early ages of social media, business executives used Ryze to establish connections. Users could create profiles, add friends, and send messages on the website. The website, which Adrian Scott launched in October 2001, served as a founder to LinkedIn. -
Friendster
Even though social networks existed before Friendster, none of them had such success. Launched in March 2002 by Jonathan Abrams and Peter Chin. The features on their website that showed how you were connected to strangers made it less intimidating.
Users had to switch to MySpace due to technical difficulties. -
LinkedIn
What started out as a website for posting resumes transformed into a business networking site that grew by adding new features like hiring solutions for businesses. Reid Hoffman, Allen Blue, Konstantin Guericke, Eric Ly, and Jean-Luc Vaillant founded LinkedIn in May 2003. The company went public in the spring of 2011. -
hi5
Hi5 was able to profit within its first year launching as a social networking site. The website, which Ramu Yalamanchi founded, was more popular in Latin American regions as well as Mongolia, Tunisia, and Romania. Hi5's traffic peaked in 2007 when it was second only to MySpace. -
MySpace
Several workers from the Internet marketing company eUniverse founded the social networking site MySpace. Well-known for its band pages, individualised profiles, and culture of online stalking, ranked as the top website in 2006 and had a value of $12 billion in 2007. The company was unable to position as a market leader. For $35 million, News Corp. sold the website to Specific Media. -
Orkut
A failed attempt to acquire Friendster by Google in 2003 marked the beginning of the company's involvement in social networking. In 2004, the business carried on and introduced the networking website Orkut. The site's original invitation-only membership policy was intended to foster a community of dependable friends that had been too exclusive.Orkut is regarded as a failure in the American market. -
Facebook
Facebook was initially only accessible to Harvard students, but in 2006 it was made available to everyone. The company has consistently struggled with privacy issues. As a result of Zuckerberg's continued advancements, the business has grown to become the most popular social networking site and the second-ranked website after Google. -
Yahoo! 360 Degrees
Yahoo! 360 Degrees debuted by invitation only in 2005. The social network offered members blogs, profiles, and content in addition to other integrated Yahoo! services like Flickr, Messenger, and Yahoo! Music. The company shut down in 2009 after the product failed to gain traction in the US. -
Bebo
In 2005, Michael and Xochi Birch launched Bebo. Young users were particularly drawn to the social network's widget-style profile editor because it was simple to use. AOL purchased the website in March 2008 for $850 million. The media giant reportedly sold the business to Criterion Capital Partners in June 2010 for less than $10 million. -
Reddit
With 300 million users, Reddit has evolved from a news aggregation platform to a site for social commentary since it was founded in 2005. The ability to "up-vote" and "down-vote" user posts is the basis for its popularity. -
Youtube
With its headquarters in San Bruno, California, YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform. Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim launched it in 2005. After Google Search, it is the second most visited website and is owned by Google. -
Pinterest
Ben Silbermann created Pinterest in 2010 as a visual "pin board" and it now has more than 335 million active monthly users. In 2019, Pinterest became a publicly traded company. -
Instagram
Instagram, a photo-sharing website launched in 2010 by Stanford grad Kevin Systrom and acquired by Facebook in 2012, has more than 1 billion users worldwide. -
Google+
Google+ was introduced on the official Google blog in 2011. The social media giant's most recent foray is likely its most comprehensive to date. The website provides Facebook-like features like a news feed, photo albums, and groups. With the addition of the video chat room known as Hangouts, Google+ beat Facebook. -
Snapchat
This video-sharing service, which was established in 2011 by three Stanford students named Evan Spiegel, Reggie Brown, and Bobby Murphy, introduced the concepts of "stories," or serialised short videos, and "filters," which are used to create educational digital effects that are frequently based on location. -
justin.tv (Twitch)
Video games are the main focus of the livestreaming website Twitch. Justin Kan founded it in 2011 at first as a Justin.tv spin-off. The latter began in 2007 as a single channel that broadcast Kan's life in real time around the clock, creating the term "lifecasting." -
Discord
In 2015, Discord was created to address a significant issue: how to communicate online while playing games. Jason Citron and Stan Vishnevskiy the founders have both loved video games and the relationships that have grown up around them. -
Tiktok
This short-form video sharing platform, which was established in 2016 by the Chinese tech company ByteDance, merged with the American mobile application Musical.ly in 2018, and it quickly gained popularity among American teenagers and young adults. It had more than 800 million users worldwide as of the beginning of 2020.