Most Popular Social Media Platforms 1997 – 2023

This is an update to the original video published in 2020. I’ve included more data for Chinese social media platforms and included some that I left out such as YouTube and Telegram, since they’re no longer just basic apps for video and messaging. In this data visualization video I look at the most popular social media networks based on active accounts during that time.

These stats come from Wikipedia, Statista, archive.org and from Google Books searches. I did not include those platforms that did not report stats. Some of the data includes approximate numbers as the data available skipped years.

In the video I included screenshots of certain platforms from the list as they looked during that particular year. The platform thumbnails:

1997 – Bolt
Founded as a community for teens

1998 – Classmates
Biggest collection of yearbooks online

1999 – Open Diary
Introduced commenting and privacy settings

2000 – theGlobe
Chatrooms and online clubs

2001 – PlanetAll
Bought and killed by Amazon

2002 – LiveJournal
Still Popular in Russia for Microblogging

2003 – MySpace
First global social network

2004 – Orkut
From Google, became popular in Brazil

2005 – Friendster
Created before MySpace, Hi5 and Facebook

2006 – QQ
Messaging and web portal from China

2007 – Hi5
Social media with focus on dating

2008 – VKontakte
Russian clone of Facebook

2009 – Facebook
Infamous update of news feed

2010 – Tagged
Originally a social network for teens

2011 – Tumblr
Microblogging and social network

2012 – QZone
Social network from China

2013 – OK.ru
Russian social network

2014 – Reddit
Content discovery and discussion

2015 – Vine
Short looping video clips

2016 – Snapchat
Video messaging with goofy filters

2017 – WeChat
Reaches 1 million mini apps

2018 – Whatsapp
Implemented stories

2019 – Facebook
Testing redesign

2020 – TikTok
Dance challenges

2021 – Messenger
Meta’s original messaging app

2022 – YouTube
Added shorts and stories

Thank you for watching. Let me know which platforms have been your favorite?

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