The History of Social Media Sites

The Bulletin Board System (BBS)

Feb 16, 1978

This was the first system to let users interact using the internet. The BBS was system where users would dial in via the modem of a host to exchange data to other users through the phone lines.

GeoCities

Nov 1, 1994

GeoCities was a web hosting service that allowed users to place their own webpages in categories relating to their content. The categories were named after real cities, for example computer related cites were assigned to a category named "SiliconValley".

SixDegrees

Jan 1, 1997

Names after the six degrees of separation concept this early form social media allowed users to send messages, post bulletin board items to others whilst being able to list friends and family on their site.

MSN Messenger

Jul 22, 1999

An instant messenger service that attracted millions of users in its peak - 330 million to be exact! It allowed users to send each other messages instantly, create profiles, show other listeners what music they were listening to and saw the start of first kind of "emojis"

Friendster

Mar 5, 2002

Friendster was designed for people to make new friends and keep in contact old ones via the internet in a safe manner.

LinkedIn

Aug 31, 2002

One of first modern professional social networking that is to this day extremely popular. LinkedIn allows professionals to have their own profiles listing their credentials and allows contacts to keep in touch and companies to posting job listings.

Myspace

Aug 1, 2003

The first of the modern social networking websites. This was one of the first social networking sites to combine friends, groups, photos and music with its very own music player and artist profiles.

Facebook

Feb 4, 2004

Facebook was co-founded by Mark Zuckerberg and 4 other friends from college. It was launched in 2004 being limited to Harvard University students only. From 2006 it was then open to anyone aged 13 or older, which from then the rest was history.

World Of Warcraft / MMORPG's

Nov 23, 2004

The early 2000's saw the rise of gaming and social media so its no wonder that these two combine! WOW and massively multiplayer online role-playing games saw the start of social connections through the games and through online forums.

Youtube

Feb 14, 2005

Youtube started out as a small video-content sharing website created by PayPal employees. The site quickly grew in popularity to expand beyond the US and was launched in Australia in 2007. By 2013 the site had managed 1 billion unique visitors each month!

Twitter

Mar 21, 2006

Twitter allows users to send short 140 character messages otherwise known as "tweets" to their followers. According to Twitter as of March 2016 the site has more than 310 million active users

Tumblr

Feb 11, 2007

Tumblr is unique in that it is a blog and social networking site combined. It allows for multimedia postings and that can be accessed through the users 'dashboard'. It is one of, if not the most popular blogging sites with 312.2 million blogs as of September 1st 2016.

I joined Facebook

Jan 11, 2008

This was the second social media site i joined (after Myspace). I didn't use it much until it became popular amongst my friend group in 2009.

Pinterest

Mar 24, 2010

This photosharing site was originally shared just for family and friends, but soon grew to a fellowship of millions. Pinterest allows users to store 'pins' of photos, or ideas. Most commonly used for inspiration for DIY crafts.

Instagram

Oct 18, 2010

Instagram is a photo and video sharing site and mobile app with the unique feature of allowing users to apply filters to their images. It allows users to follow other users, direct message each other and aided in the growth of #hashtags

Snapchat

Sep 6, 2011

Snapchat took the concept of photo sharing to the next level, allowing users to send real time 'snaps' to their friends. It then progressed to crazy face changing filters and allowing users to view "mystory's" from around the world.

Tinder

Sep 7, 2012

The newer kid on the block, Tinder is a social dating app that utilises Facebook profiles. The profiles show mutual friends and a select number of photos and allows users to swipe left (no) or right (yes) to potential matches. The catch? Users can only interact if they have matched each other. Tinder has aided in taking the stigma out of online dating with users swiping through 1.6 billion profiles matching more than 25 million people a day since April 2015 (Mashable, 2015).