social media innovation 1980 - 2019

  • Bulletin Board System

    Bulletin Board System
    Bulletin Board System (BBS) emerges as one of the earliest known forms of social media and remains popular and under development until the late 1990s. A bulletin board system (BBS) is a computer or an application dedicated to the sharing or exchange of messages or other files on a network. Originally an electronic version of the type of bulletin board found on the wall in many kitchens and workplaces, the BBS was used to post simple messages between users.
  • SixDegrees Launch

    SixDegrees Launch
    Social networking website SixDegrees.com is created, which is said to be the first ever social media website. Founded by Andrew Weinreich in May 1996, the site launched the following year and combined popular features such as profiles, friends lists and school affiliations in one service.
  • Open Diary Launch

    Open Diary Launch
    Open Diary launches the first social blogging network, inventing the reader comment and friends-only content. Open Diary is an online diary community, an early example of social networking software. It was founded on October 20, 1998. Open Diary went offline on February 7, 2014, but was re-launched on January 26, 2018.
  • Habbo Launch

    Habbo Launch
    Habbo is a social networking service and online community aimed at teenagers. The website is owned and operated by Sulake, a Finnish corporation. The service began in 2000 and has expanded to include nine online communities, with users in over 150 countries.
  • SixDegrees.com shuts down.

    SixDegrees.com shuts down.
  • LinkedIn Launch

    LinkedIn Launch
    LinkedIn is a business and employment-oriented service that operates via websites and mobile apps. Founded on December 28, 2002, and launched on May 5, 2003, it is mainly used for professional networking, including employers posting jobs and job seekers posting their CVs.
  • Skype Launch

    Skype Launch
    Skype is a telecommunications application that specializes in providing video chat and voice calls between computers, tablets, mobile devices, the Xbox One console, and smartwatches via the Internet. Skype also provides instant messaging services. Users may transmit text, video, audio and images.
  • Facebook Launch

    Facebook Launch
    Facebook, Inc. is an American online social media and social networking service company. It is based in Menlo Park, California. It was founded by Mark Zuckerberg, along with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes.
  • YouTube Launch

    YouTube Launch
    YouTube is an American video-sharing website headquartered in San Bruno, California. Three former PayPal employees—Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim—created the service in February 2005. Google bought the site in November 2006 for US$1.65 billion; YouTube now operates as one of Google's subsidiaries.
  • Reddit Launch

    Reddit Launch
    Reddit is an American social news aggregation, web content rating, and discussion website. Registered members submit content to the site such as links, text posts, and images, which are then voted up or down by other members
  • Tumblr Launch

    Tumblr Launch
    Tumblr is a microblogging and social networking website founded by David Karp in 2007 and owned by Verizon Media. The service allows users to post multimedia and other content to a short-form blog. Users can follow other users' blogs. Bloggers can also make their blogs private.
  • Pinterest Launch

    Pinterest Launch
    Pinterest, Inc. is a social media web and mobile application company that operates a software system designed to discover information on the World Wide Web, mainly using images and, on a smaller scale, GIFs and videos. The site was founded by Ben Silbermann, Paul Sciarra, and Evan Sharp.
  • Instagram Launch

    Instagram Launch
    Instagram, a photo/video sharing and social media service, launches. Instagram is a photo and video-sharing social networking service owned by Facebook, Inc. It was created by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger and launched in October 2010 exclusively on iOS.
  • Snapchat Launch

    Snapchat Launch
    Snapchat, a photo/video sharing and social media service, launches. Snapchat is a multimedia messaging app used globally, created by Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy, and Reggie Brown, former students at Stanford University, and developed by Snap Inc., originally Snapchat Inc.
  • Vine Launch

    Vine Launch
    Vine, a widely popular video sharing and social media service, launches shortly after being acquired by Twitter for $30 million. Vine was a short-form-video-hosting service on which users shared six-second-long, looping video clips. It was founded in June 2012; American microblogging website Twitter acquired it in October 2012, before its launch, on January 24, 2013
  • Instagram launches video sharing.

    Instagram launches video sharing.
  • Vine

    Vine
    Vine announced that Twitter would be discontinuing the Vine mobile app, later renamed to "Vine Camera"