Social Media

Bulletin Board System

1980

The Bulletin Board System (BBS) is one of the first forms of social media. The BBS allowed people to share information and files with each other. The BBS was popular through the 1990's.

Classmates.com

1995

Classmates.com was launched as a list of school affiliations. But later on was used for people to find old classmates and offered a way to reconnect.

Sixdegrees.com

1997

Sixdegrees.com was a website used to connect with family and friends. You would connect with someone you know that was also on the website and you would be able to post updates that your friends could see.

AOL Instant Messenger

1997

AOL Instant Messenger allowed people to message each other in real time. It was very popular during the 1990's.

Open Diary

Oct 28, 1998

Open Diary was a website that allowed online diary writers together into one community. The website allowed people to read other user's diary entries and comment on them. Similar to a blog and readers commenting on the blog.

Yahoo! Messenger

1999

Yahoo! Messenger was another instant messenger. The user needed a Yahoo! login in order to send their messages. Yahoo! also added Yahoo! Mail as an email service.

LinkedIn

May 5, 2003

LinkedIn is a professional network service that is used for professional networking. It also allows users that are looking for jobs to look for their desired job directly on the website.

My Space

Aug 1, 2003

My Space was the first type of social media to allow the user to create a profile with a picture and allow a space for the user to say their interests. My Space was the first social media to have a global influence.

Skype

Aug 29, 2003

Skype is an instant messaging application that also has the ability to make calls where you can connect with video and audio.

Facebook

Feb 4, 2004

Facebook is an online social media platform where users can create a profile and share pictures and videos with others.

YouTube

Feb 14, 2005

YouTube is an online video sharing social media platform. It was created so people could easily find popular clips in pop culture.

Reddit

Jun 23, 2005

Reddit is a platform where users can rate and comment on things posted in a discussion boards format. Posts are organized on different user-created subreddits which are communities people can follow about a certain topic.

Twitter

Mar 21, 2006

Twitter is a social media service where users can post messages, pictures, and videos. Other users can reply, like, or share what others post.

VK

Oct 10, 2006

VK is a Russian based social media service that has a similar format to Facebook. VK allows users to share pictures, videos, and make event pages.

Tumblr

2007

Tumblr offers users the ability to post content to a short-form blog. Other users of the website can follow other users blogs.

Pinterest

2009

Pinterest is a service allowing image sharing where users can save images to their "Pinterest board" which is a way to organize the users saved pictures.

Quora

Jun 25, 2009

Quora is a question and answer based platform. Users can post a question and anyone can answer the question.

Instagram

Oct 6, 2010

Instagram is a platform where users can share pictures and videos. Instagram is owned by Meta (Facebook). Followers of an account can view the content on their Instagram. Instagram allows users to tag others, and also tag a location to where the picture was taken.

Snapchat

2011

Snapchat is a instant messaging app where users can send pictures with text to other users that are mutual friends. There is also a text feature along with sending pictures.

Twitch

Jun 6, 2011

Twitch is a video streaming platform that allows users to stream them playing video games or something in real life. Twitch users can live stream to viewers or watch someone's live stream and interact with each other in a live chat during a stream.

Google+

Jun 28, 2011

Google+ was a social media service from Google that allowed people to share pictures, videos, and status's with their friends. It also had an instant messaging and video call service.

Tinder

2012

Tinder is a online dating application where users can swipe right or left to like or dislike other users. If two people like each other then they can message each other.

Vine

Jan 24, 2013

Vine was a video host where users could post videos up to six seconds long. Users could browse videos and share them on other platforms like Facebook and Instagram.

Musical.ly

2014

Musical.ly was a video sharing platform where users could create videos lip-syncing and dancing to music. The videos could be between 15 seconds and 1 minute.

Discord

May 13, 2015

Discord is an instant messaging platform that allows, calls, video calling, and text messaging. Users can participate in private chats called servers to talk to others. Discord is prominently used to communicate with others while playing online video games.

Triller

Jul 23, 2015

Triller is a video sharing platform where users can share short-form videos. Users can use music to create their videos.

TikTok

2016

TikTok merged with Musical.ly to create a new short-form video hosting service. Users can create videos with music and other sounds as the audio of the video. Videos can range from 15 seconds to 10 minutes.

Co-Star

Oct 17, 2017

Co-Star is an astrological social networking service where users can follow each other and see their astrology signs. Users can see how compatible they are off of their signs and read their daily horoscopes.

BeReal

2020

BeReal is a photo sharing platform where every day users get a notification to take a picture of them and what they are doing to share with their friends. Users get two minutes to post their "BeReal" with their friends.