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The First Social Media Site
The first social media site,SixDegrees.com, allowed you to have a profile page, send messages, and create connections with others (the first friends list). -
Are You Hot Or Not?
AmIHotorNot.com was a social media site designed for their users to submit pictures of themselves to be rated by their fellow users. -
Will You Be My Friend-star?
Friendster was actually originally supposed to be a dating site before exploding in popularity which actually ended up crashing some of their servers. -
This Is Myspace
Myspace is recognized as the social media site that innovated with the additions of customizable public profiles, as well as having over 25 million users. -
Making History
Although starting in 2003 as "Facemash" Mark Zuckerbergs "The Facebook" really gained traction in the year 2004. After registering its one millionth user the "The" was dropped creating the iconic "Facebook". -
Dating on YouTube?
When YouTube first debuted it Wass designed much like friendster in the fact that it was supposed to be a dating site. YouTube was the first big social media site to exclusively post videos as opposed to pictures. -
Check Out My Linkdin
Linkdin, unlike the majority of social media sites, was actually geared towards adults as a platform for adding resumes and creating a space to network with both companies and other people searching for employment. -
A New Site Takes Flight
Twitter began in 2006 as a site to primarily feature text posts rather then the normal pictures or YouTubes innovative videos although through the years they would add those features. -
Paid to Post?
In 2007 YouTube began their paid partnership program. With this partnership it would connect YouTube with its most popular users by using advertisements which would both pay the user and YouTube the company. -
Pound Sign < Hashtag
Besides Twitters strict character limit, its main separator from sites such as Facebook was the use of #hashtags. This symbol has become synonymous with not only Twitter but social media as a whole. Its use is to separate the users post into a specific category such as political, entertainment, etc. -
Tumbling With Blogging
Tumblr was introduced in 2007 as a microblogging site for networking. The site allowed their users to post multiple different media types in the form of a blog post. -
A Dating Site That Lasted?
Although Tinder is most synonymous with the dating site community, Grindr was actually the first dating site to maintain its status as well as maintaining its premiss as we've seen in the past with switches like Friendster and YouTube. This dating site was specifically geared towards gay and bisexual men. -
The Emoji Explosion
Although technically originating in 1999 on Japanese phones, the emoji didn't become mainstream until Unicode adopted them in 2010. This adoption was the beginning of a new language amongst social media users and in todays world, EVERYONE! -
The Inauguration of Instagram
Although the initial premise of Instagram seems formulaic, the site set itself apart from others by allowing their users to add filters to their photos. According to a 2016 study, there would be around 95 million pictures posted per day. -
Story Time With Ghosts
Snapchat launched in 2011 and changed the game with their innovative tactics. When sending a picture or video or message, the thing in question would disappear after a short period of time. This along with the feature of "memories" helped separate Snapchat from its predecessors. -
The Fall...
In 2011 MySpace was sold to Specific Media for 35 million dollars. Although the site did not have as much traction and user retention due to other sites being more innovative and interactive MySpace's selling was a big shock as it was the first huge company interaction with a social media site. -
Twitching To Go Live
Twitch launched in 2011 as a live-streaming site. Although Twitch is actually a spinoff of Justin.tv, Twitch has stood the test of time creating a community of not only content creators but their fans as well. -
One Billion Users!
Only eight years after the initial launch of "The Facebook" Mark Zuckerbergs site would reach one billion online users. Today the site is standing just bellow 3 billion users as the site has 2.96 billion active members. -
...The Return!
In 2013, only two years after being inactive, MySpace was relaunched with a completely redesigned interface as well as a brand new mobile app. This return marked the first big relaunch of a social media site one we would see later with the likes of Bebo. -
Pledging To Be A Patreon
In 2013 Patreon launched as a subscription based site where content creators can upload exclusive content while also staying more in touch with their subscribers. -
Gamers Go Social
In 2015 Discord launched as site used for messaging as well as video/audio calling primarily used within the gaming community. Although prior audio/video calling apps existed this was the first social media esc site as it focused on fun and creative interactions rather than business interactions such as Skype. -
Political Posts
The 2016 election is looked at as the social media election. With the use of Twitter and Facebook every politician was trying to up their following and voters by using the popular social media sites. These include such controversial figures such as Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. -
Dancing The Day Away
After the failure that was Musical.ly users migrated over to a new app TikTok. Like Musical.ly the majority of users on the app use TikTok as a site for dancing with such users being Charli D'Amelio and Bella Porch. -
Lets BeReal
BeReal launched in 2020 as a site begging everyone to "Be Real" and take a live forward and backwards facing picture at a random time throughout the day. This would then lead to some copycats in the form of TikTok Now. -
44 Billion Dollar Deal
Last year in 2022 Elon Musk bought out Twitter for 44 Billion Dollars making it the most expensive social media acquisition in history.