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Six Degrees
Launched in 1997 by Andrew Weinreich, Six Degrees was a website that allowed users to make profiles, connect with contacts, and add school/work affiliations. Six Degrees is widely accredited as being the first social networking website, and at its peak, had over 3 millions registered users. The site was bought by YouthStream Media Networks at the end of 2000. Source: Link -
Am I Hot or Not
Originally called "Am I Hot or Not," Hot or Not was created in 2000, piquing many people's interest as the website allowed people to upload photos of themselves and be rated on a scale of 1-10 by others on the Internet. The site even went onto offer a matchmaking engine and other features. Hot or Not, while often forgotten today, heavily influenced the digital spaces many use today, including YouTube, Facebook, and Tinder. Source: Link -
Friendster
Friendster was created in 2002 and served as a way to keep in contact with friends, find new friends on the Internet, and social network. Friendster had over 1 million members and was popular until around 2004, when MySpace gained popularity. Source: Link -
MySpace
MySpace launched in 2003 and allowed users to create individual profiles, featuring their photos and interests, and connect with friends. MySpace expanded their features as their user base increased. It became one of the most popular sites in the early 2000s. Though its popularity has declined significantly over the years, the site remains active today. Source: Link -
LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a social networking website dedicated to making professional connections. It launched in 2003, and although it had a slow start, its user base increased as the features increased over time. LinkedIn has evolved into a platform for professional networking and career development, used to build connections with diverse users all over the world. Source: Link -
The Facebook
The American online social media known as Facebook was founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg and his fellow classmates. It was originally called Facemash and was based on the social network Hot or Not. Soon after, it turned into a place to post photographs and share personal information. Facebook is now the largest social network in the world with billions of users. Source: Link -
Flickr
Flickr is a photo and video sharing social networking site. It was created in 2004 and quickly became a sensation on the Internet. It was mostly popular among photographers, graphic designers, and bloggers, who used it to as a place for storing and organizing photos. The site quickly became an online community that people used to share and embed personal photos. Source: Link -
Reddit
Reddit was founded in 2005 by Steve Huffan and Alexis Ohanian. As opposed to other mainstream social networks, Reddit was purposed to be an aggregation that allows for upvoting, downvoting, and discussion. Members can submit content, and posts are organized by topic into communities called "subreddits." The site remains popular to this day with one of its most admired attributes being that users are more anonymous. Source: Link -
YouTube
YouTube is a video distribution platform, and it is one of the largest and most popular social networks today. YouTube was founded in 2005 and was purposed to be a place to share videos with friends online. Today, users can watch online videos, like, comment, share, subscribe to other users, and upload their own videos. Source: Link -
Twitter
Twitter, the online microblogging service and social network, emerged in 2006. It was intended to be an internal service for Odeo employees. However, it later became a short messaging service (SMS) for the public, where people could post status updates called "tweets" and connect with friends. Twitter's popularity has only increased over time, and it is now one of the world's leading social networking programs. Source: Link -
Tumblr
Tumblr is a microblogging and social media platform, where users are able to share content, ranging from photos to videos to GIFs to text posts, to form a blog. It was created in 2007 by David Karp, who was interested in creating short-form blogs. Tumblr has seen major success over the years and hosts more than 500 millions blogs as of 2021. Source: Link -
The Hashtag
The symbol known as the hashtag has found prominence over every social media platform as a way for users to tag and promote certain topics and or attributes of their content (e.g., #BlackLivesMatter, #MeToo, #SundayFunday, #Throwback). Source: Link -
Weibo
Weibo, the Chinese word for "microblog," was launched in 2009, and was one of the biggest social media platforms in China. It gained popularity in 2009 and is very similar to Twitter and Instagram as it offers trending and informational content. It is often used to for posting images, instant messaging, following friends and celebrities, posting stories, and discussing trending topics. Source: Link -
Grindr
Grindr launched in 2009 as one of the first geosocial networks that functioned as an online dating applications, particularly for gay and bisexual men. Members can create a profile and based on location, they can view other profiles nearby or faraway. Source: Link -
The Emoji
In 2010, Unicode adopted the emoji, which began appear on Apple and Google platforms. Emojis have become a cornerstone online as the symbols help communicate emotion. Emojis, in a way, can serve as form of body language in text-based communication. Source: Link -
Instagram
Instagram is a photo and video-sharing social media platform that was founded in 2010 by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger. Instagram allows users to create profiles, post pictures and videos, edit uploaded media, and like, comment, and follow other users' content. Since being launched, the app has become one of largest and most popular social networking services. Source: Link -
Pinterest
Pinterest is an image sharing social media platform, used primarily for making discoveries, finding inspiration, and coming up with new ideas. The platform was designed for users to save content (e.g., images, GIFs, and videos) called "Pins" into groups called "Boards." The app first saw success in 2011 with Time magazine listing it in a "50 Best Websites of 2011" article. Today, the app has over 400 million users. Source: Link -
Snapchat
Snapchat is a multimedia instant messaging app that was founded in 2011 by Evan Spiegel, Reggie Brown, and Bobby Murphy. The app was designed to have use post photos and videos that would disappear after a certain amount of time. Snapchat has since evolved, allowing users to send pictures and messages that are only available for a few moments, post "Stories" which last 24 hours, save photos in Snapchat, and more! Source: Link -
Google Plus
Google Plus (Google+) was a social networked launched in 2011 by Google. It was introduced for users to post photos and status updates, meant to challenge other social media networks. It also offered multi-person instant messaging and allowed users to upload media to private cloud-based albums. Google Plus was discontinued in early 2019 due to low user engagement and software design flaws. Source: Link -
Year of the Selfie
Twitter declared 2014 the "Year of the Selfie." A selfie is a photo phenomenon, used to describe the act of one taking a digital photograph of themselves and sharing it on social media. Twitter proclaimed this "Year of the Selfie" following Ellen DeGeneres' famous Oscar selfie. Source: Link -
Periscope
Introduced in 2015, Periscope was a live video streaming platform developed by Kayvon Beykpour and Joe Bernstein and acquired by Twitter. Periscope was designed to let users stream what they wanted and interact with those watching their live broadcast. The app gained popularity right after launching, though Periscope was integrated into the Twitter app in 2016. Source: Link -
Facebook LIVE
Following other popular live stream services like Periscope and Meerkat, Facebook gave their uses the ability to live stream on their platform in 2016. This feature has become increasingly popular as users can live broadcast events, performances, and gatherings, and viewers can react, comment, share, etc. Source: Link -
Instagram Launches Instagram Stories
In 2016, Instagram launched "Stories," which is designed to work like Snapchat Stories. Users were very excited to see this feature as they could now upload content, photos and videos, that disappeared after 24 hours. Source: Link -
Twitter Increases Character Limit
Twitter users were ecstatic when Twitter doubled their character limit from 140 to 280 characters in 2017. 140 more characters made a significant difference to users, who were thrilled that they could say more in each of their tweets. Source: Link -
Instagram Launches IGTV
Instagram TV, or IGTV, is standalone video application owned and operated by Instagram. As Instagram continues to rebrand itself as more than a photo-sharing app, its initial purpose, the app has extended its features and applications to function for videos. While Instagram allows users to make videos as long as one minute, IGTV allows users to post videos up to 60 minutes long. Source: Link