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Online Chat Room
Talkomatic was developed at the University of Illinois by Dave Woolley and Douglas Brown. It was the first online chat room -
BBS
Bulletin Board System is invented and acts as a digital bulletin board, where people could post me messages and other files. -
School Communication
Classmates.com was launched to help current and former students connect with each other. The website was invented by Randy Conrads. -
The First
"SixDegrees.com" the first social media platform that involved creating a profile and messaging others was founded by Andrew Weinreich. -
Early Success
Due to success, SixDegrees.com was purchased by YouthStream Media Networks for $125 million. -
Yahoo
Yahoo introduces an instant messenger called Yahoo! Messenger. -
Image Uploads
AmIHotorNot.com was created for users to upload pictures so others can rate them based on looks. Many people believed this started many insecurities in the public. It's also rumored to influence the creation of YouTube and Facebook. -
Habbo
Habbo was released as a virtual reality community for social networking. -
The Fall
SixDegrees.com shuts down just two years after being bought. -
Friendster
Friendster was launched in 2002 and was founded by John Abrams. The early success lead to complications with the servers. -
Business Community
LinkedIn was launched and became the biggest social networking platform for the business community. Still has nearly 850 million users today. -
Myspace
Myspace was released to the public in 2003 and became a hit. It included free custom profiles, pictures, music, and videos. They instantly competed with Friendster and ultimately won. -
Video Call
The very popular Skype was introduced to the public for video calls. -
Mark Zuckerberg
Harvard University alum Mark Zuckerberg released Facemash, which was later changed to "The Facebook." -
Period: to
Social Media Surge
The rise of social media networks started with the developments of Flickr, Photobucket, and del.ici.ous coming into play. -
Facebook
"The Facebook" was changed to Facebook and reached over a million users. -
Youtube
Three former PayPal employees developed YouTube to be a video-sharing platform. It brought around 2 million views a day before the end of the year. That number just continued to grow and is still heavily used today. -
News and Discussion
Reddit was launched and is still very popular today with around 48 million monthly users. -
580 Million
In 2005, Myspace was bought by News Corporation for 580 million. -
Twitter
First developed in 2004 named as Twttr by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams. It became a household name in 2006 as Twitter. Twitter is still one of the most successful platforms. -
Microblogging
21-year-old David Karp develops Tumblr from his bedroom. It reached around 100 million users during its peak. Twitter and Tumblr started the trend of microblogging. -
The Hashtag
The hashtag was brought to Twitter by Chris Messina. It revolutionized how information spreads and is still used today. -
Instagram
Instagram was released in 2010 by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger to share images and videos. -
The art of Pining
Pinterest was launched in 2010 by creators Ben Silbermann, Paul Sciarra, and Evan Sharp. They incorporated pining images for personal preference. -
More Pictures
The popular Snapchat was created in 2011 after first being named Picaboo. -
1 Billion Users
Facebook reaches a billion uses and becomes the biggest social media platform ever. They also now own Instagram and WhastsApp. -
44 Billion
Elon Musk purchases twitter for 44 billion dollars and makes changes.