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One of the first ever true social media sites was SixDegrees.com, which allows users to create a profile page, list connections, and send messages to other users within the network. This site still exists today! -
Yahoo! Messenger was an ad-supported instant messaging client, provided by Yahoo! It was free to all, providing they sign up with a Yahoo ID. -
This website or what some call game, allowed people to submit pictures of themselves so that others could rate them on their looks. There are rumors that this influenced the creators of Facebook and Youtube. -
One of the first websites to focus on creating connections between its users, Friendster was set to find commonalities between people, and included status updates, moods, and of course pictures. -
Mark Zuckerburh launched "Facemash" which was changed to "The Facebook" in the following year. The final name change followed to just become "Facebook", the site we all love (or hate) today. -
A quick rival to Friendster, this site attracted millions of teens. Its customizable profile features included music, videos, and pictures. In 2005, Myspace had over 25 million users and was the fifth most popular site in the United States. -
Youtube launched in 2005, which grows to the largest video-sharing platform to this day. Its first video "Me at the zoo" was of a man talking with elephants in the background. -
"Twttr", later changed to "Twitter" launched in 2006. It lets users share short messages and pictures. It was originally planned to be a text message tool for sending updates between friends. -
One of the first microblog websites to exist. Tumblr was widely used for elements of small exchange in text, and videos and images. -
Twitter's significance in the digital age was the hashtag. This is a symbol that helps people organize interests. It has created and supported political matters. It is an easy way to group content. -
Providing a nice contrast between the types of social media sites thus far, LinkedIn is a more mature-based professional site. Its jobs feature attracted lots of job-seeking adults to sign up. -
Grindr was the first geosocial networking app designed for gay and bisexual people. -
The birth of "pinning". Pinterest is a site designed for pinning pictures and topics. It is heavily image based. -
Unicode adoped emojis in 2010. This was the first move of emojis being used as a language -
The birth of the picture-focused platform. The first post was from its creator, on July 16th, 2010, which was an uncaptioned shot of a marina. -
The disappearing act of sending someone a picture, for it to (seemingly) never be seen again, launched in 2011. This app attracts many teens. -
Launched in 2016 by Chinese technology company ByteDance, TikTok is one of the most popular apps to date. Users can post videos from dancing, to "educational" videos. Almost anything is allowed on Tiktok