-
Talkomatic
created by Dave Woolley and Douglas Brown at the University of Illinois, as a multi-user chat room application. It is an instant sensation among users in the PLATO System's online community. -
Fiddnet
BBSs(bulletin board systems) start to exchange email in North America and later internationally. The FidoNet system was based on several small interacting programs, only one of which needed to be ported to support other BBS software. -
Classmates.com
originally launched as a list of school affiliations, is launched in December 1995. The site, founded by Randy Conrads, later incorporated features to help former and current classmates find and contact each other online. -
SixDegrees.com
The first true social media site that let you set up a profile page, create lists of connections and send messages within networks -
Hot or Not
The site that invited users to submit photos of themselves so others could rate their attractiveness. -
Habbo
It was a virtual chat room running on Aapo's Fuse technology. After having been contracted to design a virtual game and chat called Lumisota (Snow Wars) for a Finnish internet service provider, they were contracted for another project. -
Friendster
A dating site that would help set up people with friends in common. Unfortunately, the site’s spike in popularity in 2003 caught the company by surprise and took a toll on its servers, impacting users, who increasingly looked to connect elsewhere. -
Myspace
Its customizable public profiles (which often featured music, videos and badly shot, half-nude selfies) were visible to anyone, and were a welcome contrast to Friendster’s private profiles which were available only to registered users. -
Skype
Created by Niklas Zennström, Janus Friis, and four Estonian developers and first released in August 2003. Skype originally featured a hybrid peer-to-peer and client–server system. -
Flickr
An image and video hosting website, launches. Many users use Flickr to keep personal photos, and it is also widely used as a platform for hosting images and videos that are later embedded in other websites and services. -
YouTube
YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. -
Reddit
an American social news aggregation, web content rating, and discussion website, launches -
Twitter
Despite its 2004 birth date, 2006 was arguably the year Facebook truly took flight: it opened registration to everyone and went from an exclusive Harvard-only club to a global network. The first tweet ever, posted by co-founder @Jack Dorsey on March 21, 2006, read: “just setting up my twttr.” So glad they changed the name, because “twttr” scks! -
VK (VKontakte)
An extremely popular Russian-based social networking service that resembles Facebook, launches. This service is very popular in Europe. -
Tumblr
The social network described as “Twitter meets YouTube and WordPress” came a-tumblin’ along. 17-year-old David Karp launched Tumblr from his bedroom in his mother’s New York apartment. The site allowed users to curate pictures, videos and text and “reblog” their friends on their “tumblelogs.” -
Grindr
The first geosocial networking app for dating geared towards gay and bisexual men, helping them meet other men nearby. For better or worse, it revolutionized hookup culture for gay men, and paved the way for many others like Scruff, Jack’d, Hornet, Chappy, and Growlr (for bears). -
Instagram
-
Pinterest
Was once called “digital crack for women” and gave women’s lifestyle magazines and blogs a new raison d’etre. Though it first went live in closed beta in 2010, it wasn’t until 2011 that it offically released. -
Google Plus
Google attempted to roll out another answer to Facebook and Twitter—following previous failed attempts like Google Buzz and Orkut. Google Plus differentiated itself from Facebook with its “circles” for organizing friends and acquaintances that could be done easily without having to send a friend request. -
Path
social networking-enabled photo sharing and messaging service for mobile devices that was launched in 14 November 2010. The service allows users to share up to a total of 50 contacts with their close friends and family. Based in San Francisco, California, the company was founded by Shawn Fanning and former Facebook executive Dave Morin. -
SnapChat
American multimedia instant messaging app and service developed by Snap Inc., originally Snapchat Inc. One of the principal features of Snapchat is that pictures and messages are usually only available for a short time before they become inaccessible to their recipients. -
Twitch
a live-streaming service that is popular worldwide, launches. This service is a spin-off from Justin.tv, as it is more focused on broadcasting users playing video games. -
Discord
a VoIP and instant messaging social platform. Users have the ability to communicate with voice calls, video calls, text messaging, media and files in private chats or as part of communities called "servers". A server is a collection of persistent chat rooms and voice channels which can be accessed via invite links. Discord runs on Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, iPadOS, Linux, and in web browsers. -
Triller
American video-sharing social networking service. The service allows users to create and share short-form videos, including videos set to, or automatically synchronized to music using artificial intelligence technology. -
Facebook Live
Facebook was slow to slide into the live stream game, first rolling out live streaming features on its platform in 2016. -
Mastodon
Free and open-source software for running self-hosted social networking services. It has microblogging features similar to Twitter, which are offered by a large number of independently run nodes, known as instances, each with its own code of conduct, terms of service, privacy policy, privacy options, and content moderation policies. -
TikTok
TikTok is a popular social media app that allows users to create, watch, and share 15-second videos shot on mobile devices or webcams. With its personalized feeds of quirky short videos set to music and sound effects, the app is notable for its addictive quality and high levels of engagement. -
BeReal
French social media app released in 2020. It was developed by Alexis Barreyat and Kevin Perreau. After a couple of years of relative obscurity, it rapidly gained popularity in early and mid-2022. -
Truth Social
An alt-tech social media platform created by Trump Media & Technology Group, an American media and technology company founded in October 2021 by former U.S. president Donald Trump. It has been called a competitor to Parler and Gab in trying to provide an uncensored alternative to Twitter and Facebook.