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Social media did not begin with one universally agreed first website. Online communities and services had social features before recognizable social network sites appeared; SixDegrees is commonly identified as the first site to combine user profiles, stated friend connections and the ability to browse those connections. From there, the web’s social formats widened—from friend networks to participatory publishing, video, short updates and visual platforms. This is a selective, primarily U.S.-centered chronology, not a complete history of every country or service.
What is the history of social media?
Social media’s history is best understood as a sequence of changing ways to connect and publish, rather than a contest to name one invention. Early online forums, bulletin boards, chat and other communities let people interact, but they did not necessarily offer the profile-and-friend features associated with later social network sites.
In a 2007 scholarly overview, danah boyd and Nicole B. Ellison describe social network sites through three linked capabilities: users create profiles, articulate connections to other people, and view those connections. Their account identifies SixDegrees as the first recognizable service to combine those capabilities, while noting that related features existed earlier in other services. That distinction matters: calling SixDegrees the first recognizable social network site is more precise than calling it the first social service of any kind.
What was the first social media site?
By the profile-and-connection definition, SixDegrees, launched in 1997, is commonly identified as the first recognizable social network site. It let users create profiles, list friends and browse those friend lists. It attracted users but did not become a sustainable business, and it closed in 2000.
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The answer changes if “social media” is used more broadly to include online communities, messaging or earlier services with only some network features. Those precedents are part of the history, but the available evidence does not establish one definitive first social-media platform across all definitions.
How did social media develop? A selected chronology
Before 1997: communities and partial social features
Forums, bulletin boards, chat and other online communities provided ways to communicate before the recognizable social network site model. Profiles and friend-like features also appeared in different forms across earlier services. These are important precursors, not proof of a single first platform.
1997–2000: SixDegrees puts profiles and connections together
SixDegrees brought profiles, articulated friend lists and browsing those lists into one recognizable social network site. It closed in 2000 after failing to establish a sustainable business.
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2002: Friendster makes friends-of-friends a draw
Friendster launched in 2002 as a social complement to Ryze, helping people meet friends-of-friends. It gained early traction and grew quickly, but server and database problems, along with tensions in the growing community, hindered the service.
2003: LinkedIn and MySpace represent different network uses
Pew Research Center’s web-history timeline dates LinkedIn’s launch and MySpace’s founding to 2003. MySpace was quickly adopted by musicians who wanted to share music and build fan bases, illustrating how social networks could serve audiences and creators as well as personal connections.
2004: Facebook launches as “Web 2.0” becomes a period label
Pew dates the launch of thefacebook.com to 2004. The same period saw “Web 2.0” emerge as an umbrella term for participatory online services, including blogs, wikis and social networks. It described a broader shift toward user participation; it was not a new social-network technology in itself.
2005: YouTube adds video sharing to the mix
YouTube was founded in 2005, and Pew’s timeline records its first video upload in April that year. Video sharing became another prominent social format alongside profile-based networks.
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Pew dates Twitter’s launch to 2006 and records Jack Dorsey’s first post. Short updates offered a distinct way to publish and converse in near real time, beyond the profile-centered model.
2010: Instagram and Pinterest mark visual sharing
Pew’s timeline lists Instagram and Pinterest as launching in 2010. Their arrival marks the growing prominence of photo and visual-content services in the selected chronology.
2010s–2020s: a multi-platform environment
Social media use did not settle around one successor to the early networks. Pew’s 2015 retrospective documents substantial growth in U.S. adult social-networking use from 2005 to 2015; a later Pew report measured YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and other services among U.S. adults. Together, these snapshots show a broader mix of platforms and formats, but they are not an exhaustive worldwide launch history.
What changed as social media grew?
The milestones show a widening set of social affordances. Early recognizable network sites emphasized profiles and visible friend connections. Later services made it easier to publish different kinds of material: music and fan pages on MySpace, video on YouTube, short real-time updates on Twitter, and visual posts on Instagram and Pinterest. “Web 2.0” captured the period’s participatory character across blogs, wikis and networks rather than describing a single platform.
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Repair common Windows errors and clear accumulated junk for a smoother, more stable PC - no reinstall needed.Free scan · no reinstallThis chronology is selective and centered on examples documented in U.S.-oriented sources. Platform sequences and adoption varied by country; these milestones should not be read as a universal path that every region followed.
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How widely do people use social media?
Adoption figures need a population, survey date and measure. The following are dated U.S. survey results, not current global user counts:
- 2005–2015: Pew reported that 12% of U.S. adults ages 18–29 used social media in 2005, compared with 90% in 2015. Pew noted that this series had no data for 2007.
- 2023 survey, published in 2024: Pew surveyed 5,733 U.S. adults 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, and 47% reported using Instagram.
- TikTok: In Pew’s 2023 survey, 33% of U.S. adults reported using TikTok, up from 21% in 2021. Pew cautions that changes in survey mode between waves can affect comparisons.
Pew’s survey documentation also notes that Twitter had changed its name to X during the survey period. These findings describe their stated U.S. populations and survey waves; they should not be presented as 2026 usage rates or as globally comparable platform totals.
Further reading on social media’s early history
José van Dijck’s The Culture of Connectivity: A Critical History of Social Media is a historical and critical study of social media’s rise in the first decade of the twenty-first century through 2012. It offers deeper context for that period, but it does not cover later platform developments through the present.
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