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Repair common Windows errors and clear accumulated junk for a smoother, more stable PC - no reinstall needed.Free scan · no reinstallSocial media did not begin with one universally agreed invention. Online communities and messaging came first; recognizable social network sites emerged when services combined personal profiles, visible connections and ways to browse those connections. From there, the web’s social forms widened to include professional networks, video, short text and visual sharing.
What is the history of social media?
The short version is a shift in what online services made easy: first, meeting and keeping track of people through profiles and friend networks; then, publishing and sharing across a more participatory web; and later, using platforms organized around video, short updates, photos and other formats. These forms overlapped rather than replacing one another.
There is no single agreed boundary around the term “social media.” Forums, bulletin boards, chat services and online communities enabled social interaction before the recognizable social network sites of the late 1990s. A useful distinction comes from scholars danah boyd and Nicole B. Ellison: a social network site lets people create profiles, articulate connections and view those connections. Their definition helps explain why earlier services can be social-media precursors without being the first site to combine those particular features.
The timeline below is selective and largely U.S.-centered. It draws on the 2007 scholarly history by boyd and Ellison and Pew Research Center’s web history timeline; it is not a complete account of every country’s platforms or online communities.
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| Year or period | Milestone | What it added |
|---|---|---|
| Before the late 1990s | Forums, bulletin boards, chat and other online communities | Social interaction and community preceded the recognizable profile-and-friend network model. Related features appeared in different forms across earlier services. |
| 1997 | SixDegrees | Combined profiles, articulated Friends lists and the ability to browse those lists, making it the first recognizable social network site under the definition above. |
| 2002 | Friendster | Helped friends-of-friends meet through a dedicated social network. |
| 2003 | LinkedIn and MySpace | Professional networking and music-centered profiles demonstrated different uses for social connections. |
| 2004 | Facebook and the “Web 2.0” label | A new general-purpose network appeared as “Web 2.0” became an umbrella term for participatory services, including blogs, wikis and social networks. |
| 2005 | YouTube | Video sharing became a prominent part of the social web. |
| 2006 | Short, real-time updates added a distinct mode of publishing and conversation. | |
| 2010 | Instagram and Pinterest | Photo sharing and visual discovery became prominent platform forms. |
| 2010s–2020s | A more varied, multi-platform landscape | U.S. survey data document use across services such as YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok rather than a single dominant network model. |
Before social network sites: online communities
People were already communicating, sharing information and forming communities online before sites centered on profiles and friend lists appeared. Calling one of those earlier services “the first social media site” depends on a broader definition than the one used to identify social network sites. The distinction matters: social interaction online has a longer history than the familiar profile-based platforms.
From friend networks to a wider social web
SixDegrees’ combination of profiles and browsable connections was influential as a model, but the site was not a sustainable business and closed in 2000, according to boyd and Ellison’s 2007 account. Friendster launched in 2002 as a social complement to Ryze. It gained early traction, but server and database problems and tensions within its growing community hindered the service, the same scholarly account reports.
Pew Research Center’s timeline dates LinkedIn’s launch and MySpace’s founding to 2003. MySpace was quickly adopted by musicians seeking to share music and build fan bases. In 2004, Facebook launched as thefacebook.com. The label “Web 2.0,” which Pew dates to 2004, described a broad period of participatory online services; it was not the name of a new social network technology.
The next milestones broadened what people could do on these services. Pew dates YouTube’s founding to 2005 and records its first video upload in April that year. Its timeline dates Twitter’s launch to 2006 and records Jack Dorsey’s first post. Rather than treating these as simple replacements for friend networks, it is more useful to see video and short updates as additional ways to create and circulate content.
Visual platforms and diversification
Pew’s timeline lists Instagram and Pinterest as launches in 2010. Their place in the chronology marks the growing prominence of photo sharing and visual discovery alongside profiles, text updates and video. These milestones show a broadening set of formats, not a complete account of platform launches worldwide.
What was the first social media site?
It depends on what counts as social media. If the question means the first recognizable social network site to combine user profiles, articulated friend connections and the ability to browse those connections, boyd and Ellison identify SixDegrees, launched in 1997. Their 2007 scholarly account also notes that related features existed in earlier services, so SixDegrees was not the beginning of online social interaction or every social feature.
That definition-based answer is more precise than naming an absolute first. A forum or chat service may qualify under a broad definition of social media, but it does not necessarily fit the narrower profile-and-connection model. SixDegrees is the milestone for that model, not a claim that nobody had social experiences online before 1997.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What do social media use figures tell us—and what don’t they?
Adoption figures are only meaningful when they identify the population, survey date and measure. Pew Research Center’s 2024 report is based on 5,733 U.S. adults surveyed from May 19 to September 5, 2023. In that survey, 83% reported ever using YouTube, which Pew described as the most widely used online platform measured; 68% reported using Facebook, 47% Instagram and 33% TikTok. The 33% TikTok result compares with 21% in Pew’s 2021 survey, though Pew cautions that survey-mode changes between waves can affect comparisons.
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These are dated U.S. survey results, not current global user counts. Pew’s 2024 report points readers to a 2025 report for newer U.S. survey data, so the 2023 figures should be read as a snapshot of that survey period, not as 2026 estimates.
A separate Pew Research Center retrospective published in 2015 shows how sharply social-media use had grown among young U.S. adults: 90% of adults ages 18–29 used social media in 2015, compared with 12% in 2005. Pew reported no data for 2007 in that series. This is a measure of social-media use by age group, not a platform-by-platform comparison.
Where to go deeper
For a more critical account of how social media developed, Oxford University Press describes José van Dijck’s The Culture of Connectivity: A Critical History of Social Media as a study of social media’s rise in the first decade of the twenty-first century through 2012. Its coverage ends before later platform developments, so it is a historical perspective rather than a complete history through the present.
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