In this data visualization video I look at the most popular social media networks based on active accounts during that time. I also did not include streaming video platforms such as YouTube and Twitch, I will post those in a different video.
These stats come from Wikipedia, archive.org and from Google Books searches. I did not include those platforms that did not report stats.I also reduced the numbers to take into account fake and duplicate accounts. 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
2001 – PlanetAll
Bought and killed by Amazon
2002 – LiveJournal
Still Popular in Russia for Microblogging
2003 – MySpace
2004 – Orkut
From Google, became popular in Brazil
2007 – Hi5
As popular as MySpace
2008 – VKontakte
Russian clone of Facebook
2009 – Facebook
Infamous update of news feed
2010 – Tagged
Originally a social network for teens
2011 – Tumblr
2012 – QZone
Social network from China
2013 – OK.ru
Russian social network
2014 – Reddit
2015 – Vine
Short looping video clips
2016 – Snapchat
2017 – WeChat
Reaches 1 million mini apps
2018 – TikTok
2019 – Facebook
Testing redesign
Thank you for watching. Let me know which platforms have been your favorite?