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The First Social Media Site is Created
One of the first social media sites is created, it was called SixDegrees.com. This site actually still exists today. -
Are You Hot Or Not?
A site called, "AmIHotOrNot.com" was created, which was a site that allowed people to upload photos and allowed others to rate their appearance. -
FriendSter
Friendster was a website created to help people make friends as well as spark relationships for people, even though the site was very popular, it was almost too popular. The creator's servers weren't ready for this which caused the website to be unsuccessful, as people looked for the same service elsewhere. -
MySpace is Created
MySpace was then created less than a year after Friendster, while they were very similar they were almost too similar and were considered rivals since their website had the same goal, however MySpace was much more popular. -
Gaining Traction
Social media usage was at an all-time high, as new social media websites have been used for a few years. Mark Zuckerberg created The Facesmash in 2003, which was very similar to "Hot Or Not", but was later transformed eventually (started in 2004) as what we all now know as Facebook. -
Social Media Quality Increases
In 2006, Facebook took flight, it began to open its website to all users publically instead of a select few. Twttr also was created in 2006, and is what we now is 2006. -
Linked in Creates Job Opportunities
Linked in was created this year, which was the first opportunity for adults to have job and paid opportunities for their online work. -
The Microblog
Microblogging became a worldwide term, which was used to describe what people did on social media by exchanging small elements of content. -
Tumblr was Created
Tumblr was created in 2007, the goal was to be a combination of Twitter, YouTube, and Wordpress. -
YouTube Partners with Creators
In 2007, YouTube began collaborating with its content creators and actually paying them for their work, views, and likes. -
The Hashtag
The Hashtag for Twitter was established, which helped set Twitter aside from other social media apps, as well as their strict 140 limit on characters. The hashtag helped keep up with trends, set trends, and overall made twitter more enjoyable. -
Weibo
In 2009, China banned Facebook and Twitter in their country, howver they launched a similar social media site of their own called, “Weibo” -
Grindr
Grindr was created in 2009, it was an app dedicated towards gay and bisexual men as a way to find other gay and bisexual men to hook up with or date, this was one of the first dating sites as well as LGBT dating sites. -
Emojis Become Worldwide
Emojis at this time started appearing worldwide, and they hit the internet by storm. Emojis were being added to the dictionary and were seen as a necessity for social media and the internet. -
Instagram is Created
Instagram was created in 2010, and they introduced the world and social media to all sorts of new things including filters. -
Pinterest was Created
Pinterest was introduced in Beta in 2010, and then was fully introduced by 2011. This app was one like no other, it allowed people to share and pin common interests and is still used heavily today. -
Picaboo Launches
Picaboo launched in 2011, which is now known as Snapchat, almost a year after Instagram, launched. This caused them to be rivals at the time, and they still are. -
Facebook Reached One Billion
Facebook reached one billion users in 2021, which was a huge milestone for a website that simply started off in someone's dorm room! Now Facebook has over two billion users and three billion in total on other social platforms. -
Selfies Gained Popularity
After Ellen's popular Oscar photo, which was a selfie that was reposted more than 3 million times, Selfies took the world by storm and got very popular, this even led to the creation of Selfie Sticks. -
Periscope, The Beginning of Streaming
Meerkat was actually the first site to do live streaming, however, the site did not thrive. Yet, Twitter developed Periscope which was the first big streaming app. -
Facebook Live
Facebook Live followed the creation of Periscope, however since Facebook already had a large following and a lot of users, this was easily a success for them. -
Instagram Stories
Instagram launched Instagram stories on its app, which let users post photos and 15 second videos for 24 hours, this was something very similar to what Snapchat already had and was a success. -
Social Media Confusion
In 2016 misinformation was spread using social media about the U.S. Election, the US government and other important issues. -
Facebook Vs the World
A researcher leaked data from over 50 million users, without them even knowing. This caused many people to start a campaign called “#DeleteFacebook”. However this did not happen, in fact Facebook still continued to rise in the number of users. -
IGTV
Instagram began to allow videos up to an hour to be posted using their “Instagram TV” feature, which is very similar to YouTube.