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
