History of Social Media Platforms timeline

The concept of transmitting electric signals via wires, known as telegraph, was first introduced in the early 1700s. By 1798, a primitive telegraph system was being used in France. Many historians believe that the telegraph served as a forerunner to modern-day social media.
Calise Allen

PLATO is a computer-based education system that was created in 1960 by Donald L. Bitzer at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It was a pioneer in online communication and social networking, offering features such as online forums, message boards, email, chat rooms, instant messaging, blogging, multiplayer games, and more. In fact, PLATO was the world's first online community.
LeVar Lowe

ARPANET, the first public packet-switched computer network, was created through a collaboration between researchers, data scientists, engineers, and organizations funded by the U.S. Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency. The contract to build ARPANET was awarded to the technology company, Bolt, Beranek, and Newman. ARPANET was initially used in 1969 and was finally decommissioned in 1989. Its primary use was for academic and research purposes.
Sandra Thomas

AOL, formerly known as America Online, is a web portal and online service provider based in New York City. It was founded in 1983 by Marc Seriff, Steve Case, Jim Kimsey, and William von Meister as Control Video Corporation. AOL played a significant role in the early days of the Internet. he company provided dial-up internet service to millions of Americans and was a pioneer in instant messaging and chat rooms with AOL Instant Messenger. Today, AOL is a brand marketed by Yahoo! Inc.
Sandra Thomas

In January 1994, while studying electrical engineering at Stanford University, two graduate students named Jerry Yang and David Filo created a website. Their website was called "Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web". It was a web directory that was edited by humans and organized in a hierarchy rather than being a searchable index of pages. In March 1994, the website was renamed Yahoo. Sandra Thomas

Andrew Weinreich is credited with inventing the first social media site, Six Degrees, in 1996, which was launched in 1997. Users could create profiles, make friends, and send messages to those friends. This site was popular until 2003. The name "Six Degrees" refers to the idea that everyone is connected to everyone else by six or fewer steps.
Sandra Thomas

DeviantArt is a social media platform that focuses on art. It was launched in 2000 and allows users to share their original artwork, comment on and chat with other artists. In 2007, DeviantArt also added a video function, which allows artists not only to upload their films but also to comment and annotate them at specific parts.
Nathaniel Brown

Friendster was a social networking site founded by Jonathan Abrams in Mountain View, California in 2002. It was launched in March 2003 with the aim of helping users connect and reconnect with friends, as well as find a date. However, later on, the company transformed into a social gaming site and shifted its headquarters to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Sandra Thomas

Skype is a telecommunications application owned and operated by Skype Technologies, which is a division of Microsoft. It was first launched in August 2003, and its creators are Niklas Zennström, Janus Friis, and four Estonian developers. In September 2005, eBay acquired Skype for a whopping $2.6 billion.
Calisa Allen

LinkedIn is a professional networking platform that was launched on May 5, 2003. Reid Hoffman, Konstantin Guericke, Jean-Luc Vaillant, Allen Blue, and Eric Ly co-founded LinkedIn in December 2002. LinkedIn aimed to create a platform for professional networking, allowing users to create profiles, connect with colleagues, and expand their professional networks.
Calise Allen

MySpace was founded in 2003 by Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe. It is a website and social media platform that became the most popular social network from 2005 to 2008. MySpace offers a free service that allows users to stay in touch with friends, make new acquaintances, and even find potential romantic partners. In addition to these features, MySpace also offers advertising-supported options.
Calise Allen

Vimeo was founded in December 2004 by Jake Lodwick and Zach Klein. It aimed to differentiate itself from other video-sharing websites like YouTube by focusing on high-quality content and offering tools for creative individuals to showcase their work in a more professional and artistic manner. Vimeo had a strong focus on art and provided users with settings to edit their videos to the fullest. The website allowed users to upload, share, and view videos.
LeVar Lowe

Facebook is a social media and social networking service that is owned by the American technology conglomerate, Meta Platforms. It was created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, along with Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes. Since 2006, Facebook has allowed people from all over the world to register as long as they are at least 13 years old, except in a few countries where the age limit is 14 years.
Calise Allen

Launched by Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian, two Boston Massachusetts 20 somethings. as a news-sharing platform.
300 million users have transformed Reddit into a combination news aggregation/social commentary site.
There are 50 million users who uses Reddit daily.

Popularity is based on the ability to “up-vote” and “down-vote” user posts.
David Rose

YouTube is a well-known American online platform that allows users to share videos. It is headquartered in San Bruno, California, and was founded in February 2005 by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim. The site officially launched on December 15, 2005, and at that time it was already receiving 8 million views a day. However, clips were limited to 100 megabytes, which meant that users could only upload as little as 30 seconds of footage.
Sandra Thomas

Wattpad is a social media platform founded in 2006 that's mainly used for sharing written works. It is known for its focus on fiction pieces, especially fan fiction based on popular media. You can access Wattpad on web browsers, as well as Android and iOS devices.
Nathaniel Brown

Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams founded Twitter in March 2006. The concept of Twitter was inspired by the idea of using a short messaging system for a small group. It became available to the public in July 2006.
Sandra Thomas

In 2011, Justin Kan and Emmett Shear launched Twitch.tv as a dedicated platform for gamers due to the increasing demand for gaming content on Twitch. This platform became the leading platform for video game streaming in no time. The interactive feature of live streaming enabled viewers to engage with broadcasters in real time through chat.
LaVar Lowe

Founded by David Karp as a microblogging and social networking website.
Is currently owned by American company Automatic.
Service allows users to post multimedia and other content to a short-form blog.
David Rose

On January 9, 2007, Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple at the time, announced the first-generation iPhone. Since then, Apple has been releasing new iPhone models and iOS updates every year. It was Launch June 29, 2007
Calisa Allen

WhatsApp is an instant messaging service that was created in 2009 and is currently owned by Meta. While it is mainly used on mobile devices, it can also be accessed on computers. To sign up for WhatsApp, you need a cell phone number. The service is widely used for communication in Latin America, India, Europe, and Africa.
Nathaniel Brown

Were founded by Dave Morin, Shawn Fanning, and Dustin Mierau on November 10, 2010.
Was a social networking-enabled photo sharing and messaging service for mobile devices.
And service allows users to share up to a total of 50 contacts, with their close friends and family.
David Rose

Pinterest's development started in December 2009, and a prototype was launched as a closed beta in March 2010. After nine months, the website had gained 10,000 users. Silbermann, one of the co-founders of Pinterest, personally reached out to the first 5,000 users by offering his phone number and even meeting with some of them.
Calise Allen

Quora is a social platform where people can ask and answer questions. It is also an online knowledge marketplace based in Mountain View, California. The website was founded on June 25, 2009, and became available to the public on June 21, 2010. Users can collaborate by editing questions and commenting on answers submitted by others. In 2020, the website had 300 million monthly visitors.
Calise Allen

Instagram was created by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger and launched in October 2010 for iOS. The app gained instant popularity, attracting one million users within two months, 10 million within a year, and finally reaching one billion users by June 2018. In April 2012, Facebook Inc. acquired Instagram for approximately $1 billion in stock and cash.
Sandra Thomas

Snapchat was launched in July 2011 and was initially named "Picaboo". The founders later received a cease-and-desist letter from another company that had already trademarked the name "Picaboo". Therefore, they chose the name "Snapchat" instead. The app was released on the App Store in the living room of Evan Spiegel's father's home.
Sandra Thomas

Was founded by CEO Mark Itwaru.
Keek was a free online social networking service that allowed users to upload video status updates, called “keeks”.
And users could post Keeks to the Keek website by using a webcam or Keek mobile apps for iPhone, Windows Phone, Blackberry, or Android.
David Rose

Google+ (also known as Google Plus, G+, and stylized as g+) was a social network owned and operated by Google. It was launched on June 28, 2011, with the aim of challenging other social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. Google+ allowed users to link other Google products such as Google Drive, Blogger, and YouTube to their profiles.
Calise Allen

Was founded as an online dating and geosocial networking application by Sean Rad, Justin Mateen, and Whitney Wolfe in 2012.
Is the world’s most popular dating app, in meeting new people.
And users “swipe right” to like or “Swipe left” to dislike other users profiles, which include their photos, their short bio, and some of their own interests.
David Rose

Telegram is a messaging service that was founded in 2013. Initially released for Apple devices and later launched for Android, it is now available on all mobile platforms and web browsers. Along with instant messaging, Telegram also has social media features such as creating channels for posting statuses, making public groups, and sharing stories. Additionally, Telegram supports the creation of bots that can add features to chats on the client.
Nathaniel Brown

In 2014, Larry Page created Hangouts which quickly gained popularity as the Android community grew. People started using Hangouts for personal communication, but it also became popular among businesses and corporations as it provided an easy way for them to communicate with others in the same field. Google eventually announced that Hangouts would replace the app known as "Google Talk".
LeVar Lowe

Discord is an online communication platform that was first created for gamers to chat with each other while playing games online. However, the platform quickly became popular among a variety of online communities, including those interested in hobbies, education, and professional networking. In January 2017, Discord announced that they had raised $50 million in funding, which helped them to further develop and expand their platform.
Levar Lowe

Triller is a video-sharing app developed by David Leiberman. The app allows users to create and share short videos with music. Despite being around for some time, Triller struggled to gain popularity. However, in 2019, Triller started to gain momentum due to concerns about data privacy and security on other social media platforms like TikTok. Triller then positioned itself as a more secure alternative and attracted several high-profile users and celebrities.
LeVar Lowe

Likee is a short-form video app that was founded in 2017. It's similar to Tiktok and was originally called LIKE before it made the switch in 2019. The app enables users to shoot and edit videos with standard editing features and then post them on the app for anyone to view.
Nathaniel Brown

TikTok's predecessor, Musically, was a lip-syncing app that debuted in 2014. Byte Dance, a Chinese technology company, paid $1 billion for Musical.ly in 2018. Byte Dance launched TikTok in September 2016. TikTok, the international version, was released in September 2017 for iOS and Android. Following the acquisition of Musical.ly, Byte Dance combined the two platforms and rebranded the app as TikTok in August 2018.
Calise Allen

Threads is a new social media app that was launched by Meta in July 2023. It can be accessed only with an Instagram account. Threads is quite similar to X (previously known as Twitter) and allows users to make text posts and status updates exclusively. It is an add-on feature to Instagram and provides users with a platform to share their thoughts and updates in a text-based format.
Nathaniel Brown

On July 23, 2023, Elon Musk teased that his platform would undergo a rebranding, starting with a new logo centered around the letter X. He later tweeted that if he found a suitable logo, the rebranding would be implemented the very next day. Shortly after, he posted a video on Twitter showcasing the logo transition from the Twitter logo to a new abstract X logo.
Sandra Thomas