World Social Media Day: A timeline to your favourite apps

Using technology to communicate with people 24/7 is relatively new to society. It was not before sites like MySpace in 2003, that calls, and even letters were the way to connect to other people. However, the seeds of social media were sown many years before MySpace, and the way people interact with friends and family, the sharing of information and moment, and the commentary on those actions was going to change forever with social media.

On this social media day, here's a walk down memory/nostalgia lane, to some of the apps that became an integral part of people's lives, and while some vanished into oblivion after a burst of glory, some of them still rule our screen times today.

Dec 1995: Classmates

A school affiliating site, which later helped students to contact each other through profiles.

1996: Bolt

A social networking and video sharing website, which was eventually closed down after poor response.

May 1997: Six Degrees

Considered as the first social networking site, it had profiles, friendlists, and millions of users.

Mar 1998: Yahoo! Messenger

It was an instant messaging service by Yahoo!, which was originally called Yahoo! Pager, and was shut down in 2012.

July 1999: MSN Messenger

MSN was the message-client for the internet dwellers back when it launched.

Oct 2001: Ryze

Ryze was used by business professionals to create networks and make connections.

Mar 2002: Friendster

A less intimidating platform and a safe way to meet dates for many, eventually shadowed by MySpace.

2003: Skype

Introduced for in person calling purposes and named from the term ‘sky-peer-to-peer’.

May 2003: LinkedIn

LinkedIn was launched to make professional connections, and later to post job and employment listings.

Aug 2003: MySpace

First social networking site to reach a global audience, and make a significant influence on technology, pop culture and music.

2004: Flickr

Originally developed as tools in a game developed by Ludicorp, Flickr gained widespread popularity as a photo sharing social network service.

Jan 2004: Orkut

Google launched Orkut as a social networking platform and named it after Orkut Büyükkökten, their Turkish software engineer.

Feb 2004: Facebook

Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg and three others from Harvard University as a social media platform.

Feb 2005: YouTube

A video sharing social networking platform.

Mar 2005: Yahoo! 360 Degrees

A social networking and personal communication portal operated by Yahoo!

June 2005: Reddit

Reddit is used as a social platform to create and share content among communities.

Mar 2006: Twitter

A microblogging text-based platform, which eventually integrated multimedia.

Feb 2007: Tumblr

A microblogging and social networking site which deals in short-form blogs.

2009: Whatsapp

WhatsApp was developed as a messaging application, and now has multiple features integrated in it.

Mar 2010: Pinterest

A social media platform used to engage through images of various sorts.

June 2010: Quora

A question-and-answer based social networking site.

Oct 2010: Instagram

A platform initially made for sharing photos, and later integrated video posting as well.

June 2011: Twitch

A live streaming social networking platform.

Jul 2011: Google+

No longer in use, it was Google’s social networking platform which integrated other Google services as well.

Sept 2011: Snapchat

A platform predominantly made to share temporary images and videos (snaps) with people.

Jan 2013: Vine

It allowed users to post videos on its platform, which would be six seconds long and run in loops.

Aug 2014: Musical.ly

A platform where users shared lip-sync video content, which was later merged into TikTok.

Sept 2016: TikTok

This platform allows users to share short video content, which can be edited and reach millions of its users worldwide.

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