Long before profiles and feeds, people were already connecting through networked computers. These proto-social platforms answer the question of when did social media start, and they laid the groundwork for everything that followed. Platforms such as Instagram and Pinterest have redefined the social media landscape with their visually-driven content, engaging users through images and videos. Launched in 2004, Facebook has nearly 1.7 billion users worldwide, while X formerly called Twitter, founded in 2006, engages 22% of U.S. adults. These platforms have revolutionised how information is shared and consumed, influencing global dialogue and cultural trends.
Friendster allowed users to create profiles, connect with friends, and share content. It was the first to introduce the concept of a “social network” where people could digitally manage their friendships. In 2005, the year after Facebook went live, that number was 5%. In about 15 years, social networks have risen from dorm room experiments to omnipresent platforms rivaling any in history by size and impact. They facilitated seismic shifts in communication styles, business promotion, marketing, politics, and beyond.
It’s all part of the story of social media’s ongoing evolution. Facebook and Instagram introduced Shops in 2020, letting users buy in-app and marking a major step in the rise of social commerce. TikTok Shop soon followed, blending short-form video with live shopping and turning entertainment into a checkout experience.
It was not yet social media, but the seeds were planted for personal connections on a grand scale. Later, TikTok launched in 2016 and made short videos the most popular form of content. Messaging apps also became part of social media, with features like stories, groups, and voice notes.
In May 2007, YouTube introduced its partnership program, which made it possible for creators to earn real money and essentially marked the beginning of social media influencers. As these platforms continue to evolve, they are set to redefine the boundaries of online interaction, creating a more immersive and personalised user experience. If we can learn anything from the history of social media, it’s that this will continue to change. New companies will emerge, and, as people’s preferences change, old ones will die or merge into something else, rewriting the history of social media as they do. Snapchat was launched by Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy, and Reggie Brown in September 2011. Its distinguishing feature was that it allowed users to send photos to one another that would disappear shortly after being opened.
In 1987, the direct precursor to today’s internet came into being when the National Science Foundation launched a more robust, nationwide digital network known as the NSFNET. A decade later, in 1997, the first true social media platform was launched. The table below compares several of the most significant social media platforms by launch year and primary content format. These events pushed data privacy and content integrity to the center of the social media conversation. Douyin, an app by ByteDance, was released outside of China in 2017 under the name TikTok, and it changed how social media works.
Short-form video now sets the pace, AI-curated feeds shape what people see, and creators have turned content into careers. Meanwhile, safety and regulation are taking center stage, and in some markets, growth is slowing as platforms compete harder for attention and engagement. Social media moved from “posts” to continuous video streams, with algorithms that can make a creator’s reach go viral overnight. TikTok popularized the “For You”-style discovery feed and made vertical short-form video the default. Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts followed quickly, and Stories became a standard feature across multiple platforms.
Services like AIM declined as social media platforms surged in the early 2000s. Below is a history of the century’s most influential early social media networks. Six Degrees founder Andrew Weinreich, sometimes referred to as the father of social networking, created his platform to help people connect with people they didn’t know (yet). Twitter has been the platform of choice for many writers and creatives due to its focus on microblogging; each post has a set character limit of 280, so users must be concise.
The internet significantly propelled the growth of social media. In the early 1990s, the World Wide Web opened public access to interconnected systems, amplifying online interaction. GeoCities, launched in 1994, allowed users to create personal websites, mirroring aspects of modern social media. Six Degrees, introduced in 1997, became the first platform enabling users to create profiles and connect with others directly, marking a pivotal shift toward the interconnected platforms of today. The first social media platform to gain widespread popularity was Friendster, launched in 2002.
The Launch Of Social Sites
Movements like #BlackLivesMatter and climate change campaigns gained global recognition due to this medium. By raising awareness across borders, these platforms amplify voices and promote social justice. Instagram launched in 2010, focusing on photo sharing with filters that encouraged creativity. Its user base grew rapidly, reaching 100 million users by 2012. Acquired by Facebook in the same year for $1 billion, Instagram added features like Stories in 2016, inspired by Snapchat, to boost engagement through ephemeral content. After its release, it quickly became popular, acquiring somewhere in the region of 2 million users within its first few months alone.
How Has Social Media Evolved Over The Decades?
Explore how social media began as businesses strive to maintain authentic brand voices across platforms. The landscape will undoubtedly continue to evolve with technology. With each change, there are new chances for connection and growth. But they saw the chance to reach many people with social media.
As smartphones spread, social media became mobile-first and visual-first. Photos, short videos, and live streams replaced text updates as the default way to share, reshaping which platforms rose to the top. The PLATO system, developed by the University of Illinois in 1970, had many features of an early social media network but was largely used in academia. Around the same time, Community Memory (1973) set up one of the first public computerized bulletin boards, letting people post and read messages at shared terminals.
A few months after its launch, Friendster had over 3 million users, and this number continued to grow, eventually reaching over one hundred million.
A content strategist focuses on planning, developing, and managing content to achieve specific marketing and branding goals. They create content strategies based on audience needs and business objectives, overseeing content across various platforms for coherence and effectiveness. Meanwhile, a technical writer specialises in explaining complex technical information clearly and concisely, often producing manuals, guides, and documentation. Their work is more focused on clarity and accuracy in technical communication rather than broader content goals. Content authoring became an issue for content creators with the rise of digital media and the internet, particularly in the late 1990s and early 2000s. As online platforms proliferated and the volume of digital content exploded, the challenges of creating unique, engaging, and high-quality content became more pronounced.
Do you remember Clubhouse that you can only enter with an invitation during COVID lockdowns in 2020? His fall down began quickly as soon as COVID started to lose its impact, and restrictions were diminished since Clubhouse couldn’t stay relevant. Social media has become so integrated into our lives that sometimes one can find themselves thinking how it was before.
The internet has its roots in the 1960s and 1970s when various private and public organizations were working to try and find ways to get computers to communicate with one another. In a sense, this can be considered as the beginning of online social media. However, it wasn’t until the 1980s, and really the 1990s, that personal computers became more normal, which set the stage for the emergence of social media. We use it to connect with friends and family, to catch up on current events, and, perhaps most importantly, to entertain ourselves.
The need for SEO optimisation, audience engagement, and maintaining brand consistency further compounded these challenges, making content authoring a critical focus for creators. Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube have become lucrative avenues for businesses, influencers, and content creators, transforming the digital marketing landscape. Additionally, the emergence of blogging in the 1990s helped usher in the age of social media. Instagram, founded in 2010 and acquired by Facebook in 2012, has over 1 billion users worldwide. Founded in 2006, Twitter is a microblogging platform that has become a key source of real-time news and updates.
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. While the site had millions of registered users, due to the lack of people connected to the Internet, networks were limited. It would be a few years before the Internet’s infrastructure could catch up with the concept of social networks.
Social media’s evolution provided measurement tools that gave marketing professionals unprecedented access to valuable, actionable data about consumers’ demographics, buying habits, and more. The combination of advertising, or paid social media marketing, and organic social media outreach evolved into the digital marketing specialty known as social media marketing. Facebook’s relentless expansion left all competing services in the dust. Combined with other platforms in its family, like Instagram, it has become one of history’s most influential technology products. And once social networks arrived, the striking pattern is not how fast they grew but how fast they were replaced — the first two lasted three years and one year respectively. Pinterest went live in closed beta in 2010 and launched in 2011, and pinning quickly became a favorite new hobby and verb.
It provided a clean MurafaDigital OÜ team interface, organized user connections, and quickly surpassed MySpace as the most dominant social network. Parler is among the newest kids on the block regarding social media platforms and apps. Launched in 2018, Parler describes itself as a neutral, free-speech social media platform that protects its users’ rights above all other concerns. One of the most notable social media platforms to emerge was Minds.com. They limited the original site to Harvard students to connect students across the university, similar to an online student directory with photos and basic information about the students.
- By the early 2000s, the internet had evolved, and the concept of a “social network” started to take hold.
- Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022, representing a shift in control over one of the most popular social media companies.
- Desktop access to bulletin board services such as CompuServe and Prodigy made it easier to grow free online communities without ever leaving the house.
- A rocky existence came to an end in 2018, after the private information of nearly 500,000 Google+ users was compromised by a data security breach.
The social network’s widget-style profile editor was easy to navigate and was a main draw for young users. The media giant was unable to compete with Facebook and reportedly sold the company to Criterion Capital Partners for less than $10 million in June 2010. Originally launched as a list of school affiliations, Classmates came out in December 1995. The site, founded by Randy Conrads, later incorporated features like member profiles and friends lists.