History of social media

BBS's become one of the first social medias

Jan 1, 1980

Short for bulletin board system, BBS's allowed people to communicate on an online bulletin board. These gained large popularity in the 80s. (Digitaltrends.com)

SixDegrees.com Launches

Jan 1, 1997

The first ever social media website established on the web. It was the main catalyst for other more modern social media outlets, as it allowed users to create profiles, invite friends, and surf other peoples profiles. (Digitaltrends.com)

Aol Instant Message Service

May 1, 1997

The first instant messaging juggernaut that paved the way for instant messenger to increase in popularity.

Friendster Created

Jan 1, 2002

While Six degrees didn't quite get too much popularity, Friendster was able to refine a lot of what six degrees did as is gained momentum. (digitaltrends.com)

LinkedIn

Jan 1, 2003

While other sites were meant to make social media fun, LinkedIn took a professional approach to the social media phenomenon. (digitaltrends.com)

Skype Launches

Aug 1, 2003

Innovated online conversation by creating means of video messaging.

Myspace gains popularity

Feb 1, 2005

Allowed its users to see content posted by others and also interact directly with other people and view their profiles.

Facebook opens to the public

Jan 1, 2006

Similar to other social media sites like it. Its "Like" feature, first introduced by Friendfeed in 2009 (later bought out by Facebook) separated it from many of its counterparts. It also used many user friendly features that made it appealing to its audience.(techcrunch.com)

Twitter is Launched

Mar 21, 2006

Twitter creates a new way of sharing posts with introducing "tweets," which limit your posts to 140 characters. (Buissness Insider)

Facebook creates "Facebook Platform"

Jan 30, 2007

This is when Facebook started to take over the web because this allowed third party developers to create applications for the website. This blew up the popularity of Facebook as hundreds of thousands of apps were created. (Digitaltrends.com)

Instagram rises from mobile takeover

Oct 30, 2010

As mobile applications began to become the number one spot where users interacted with social media, Instagram was created as an app only form of social media. Instagram used our highly visual society to its advantage as it is a picture based media. (digitaltrends.com)

Snapchat

Oct 30, 2011

Also a result of app based social media, Snapchat gave users a way to have a conversation by sending pictures back and forth. (Techcrunch.com)