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Release of AOL Instant Messenger
AIM is an instant messaging and presence computer program which uses the proprietary OSCAR instant messaging protocol and the TOC protocol to allow registered users to communicate in real time. AIM was popular in the late 1990s and early 2000s in the U.S. Around 2009 AIM started to lose popularity quickly, many people started purely moving onto text messaging and later social networking websites for instant messaging. Source-The Daily Dot (http://www.dailydot.com/debug/history-of-social-media/) -
Creation of LiveJournal
Though the site’s first dated post is from Nov. 23, 1997, LiveJournal as a domain and site came into existence in 1999. The journaling site hit its stride a few years later, hitting 1 million users in 2003, 2 million in January 2004, and 5 million within the year. I personally felt this way a cool way to blog before blogging was popular. Source- http://www.dailydot.com/debug/history-of-social-media/ -
Creation of Napster
Founded as a pioneering filesharing Internet service that emphasized sharing digital audio files, typically songs, converted in MP3 format. Created by Shawn and John Fanning and Sean Parker. History is tied to copyright controversy. As music fans exchanged rare bootleg performances and leaked album exclusives, many artists grew frustrated by a loss of control.Napster was forced to restrict access to copyrighted material on its servers.
http://www.dailydot.com/debug/history-of-social-media/ -
Friendster
Considered one of the original and even the "grandfather" of social networks.
The site was plagued by technical difficulties. By the time Facebook and MySpace was doing those things, Friendster had lost a lot of market share in the U.S. for stability issues.” largely faded from relevance in the U.S., Friendster was acquired by a Malaysian company in 2009, and it rebranded itself as a social gaming site in 2011.
http://www.dailydot.com/debug/history-of-social-media/ -
Myspace
Within a month, 1 mill people had signed up for the site. The site was the United States’ most-visited site as of July 2006 and was valued at tens of billions of dollars at its peak in 2007. However, an identity crisis at Myspace left the network to the same fate as many of its predecessors. “Mismanagement, a flawed merger, and countless strategic blunders have accelerated Myspace's fall from being one of the most popular websites on earth.
http://www.dailydot.com/debug/history-of-social-media/ -
LinkedIn
LinkedIn carved a niche for itself in the social networking field by focusing on connecting members for business, rather than social, reasons. By late 2003, users were syncing their address books to the service, bringing exponentially more user to the platform. It became publicly traded in 2011 and had over 225 million members by its 10th anniversary.
Still around and successful today.
http://www.dailydot.com/debug/history-of-social-media/ -
Facebook
1st created for college students then to high school students in 2005. In 2006, the site opened itself to any user with a registered email address. The same month, unveiled the News Feed, which is the backbone of the site’s recognizable interface that exists to this day.Facebook intends to launch a more robust gaming platform and deploy high-altitude drones to expand wireless internet connectivity to underserved communities.
http://www.dailydot.com/debug/history-of-social-media/ -
Flickr
More than just a photo-uploading platform. Users can connect with one another, follow friends’ activities and upload, form groups, and talk in private groups and messages. Acquired by Yahoo a little over a year after their launch. The site has seen several redesigns and additional features in the intervening decade, including content filtering, a failed attempt to sell Creative Commons wall art, and the Justified layout option in 2012.
http://www.dailydot.com/debug/history-of-social-media/ -
Reddit
Reddit is a social news aggregation, web content rating, and discussion site. Its founders, Steve Hoffman and Alexis Ohanian, met at the University of Virginia and fostered their fledgling idea at the Y Combinator startup incubator in Boston. It wasn’t an instant hit—Hoffman downvoted Ohanian’s first post, and the duo relied on bots to popular the site with links at first—but that quickly changed.
http://www.dailydot.com/debug/history-of-social-media/ -
YouTube
“Me at the zoo” was co-founder Jawed Karim’s San Diego Zoo clip. The website grew rapidly, with almost 20 million monthly visitors by the summer of 2006. Users could quickly and easily upload and share video content with friends, and it was an especially popular outlet for teenagers. Google purchased the website that same fall.With so many users uploading so much content, however, controversy was inevitable.
http://www.dailydot.com/debug/history-of-social-media/ -
tumblr
Tumblr gets widespread credit as the first mainstream tumblelog, or platform explicitly designed for shortform content. Allows users to post photos, video, quotes, text, and other short story types, and users’ followed blogs populate a dashboard with recent content. Yahoo acquired the service in 2013, much to users’ chagrin, but it has continued to grow.
http://www.dailydot.com/debug/history-of-social-media/ -
Instagram
Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger launched this popular image-sharing app. The app initially let users upload, edit, filter, and share photos, then added videos, hashtags, DMs, a web feed, inline advertising, comment filtering, zoom (finally in August 2016), and other features over the years. In 2012, Facebook agreed to pay $1 billion to acquire the app, though a Federal Trade Commission dropped the final price tag closer to $740 million.
http://www.dailydot.com/debug/history-of-social-media/
