The concept of Social Media began back in the late 1990s with the rise of six degrees (the first social media platform), Friendster, and later Myspace.
But in the last 15 years, social media platforms have really dominated the internet.
In this video, I want to walk you through the top 10 social media platforms and a quick overview and history of each one.
If you want a more detailed look at each social media platform, I have dedicated how-to-use videos for each of them. I've spent the last 4 years creating over 1000 videos on social media and tech platforms for Howfinity.com. So you should be able to find a lot more detail on each.
Facebook - 2.7 billion monthly active users Facebook is the oldest social media platform on this list, created back in 2004.
Facebook has added a lot more features to Facebook, including Facebook Stories which are short disappearing posts. Facebook Messenger has become one of the biggest stand-alone messaging platforms. Facebook Marketplace to buy and sell anything.
YouTube-2 billion monthly active users YouTube started back in 2005 as a video-sharing website. Google bought YouTube in 2006 for over 1 billion dollars. Anyone can create a YouTube account, make a channel on YouTube, and upload their own YouTube video. YouTube began to pay its creators a few years in and currently pays creators 55% of all revenue they receive from running ads on videos.
Instagram - 1 billion monthly active users Instagram was created back in 2010 as a camera and filter app and has become one of the biggest social media apps. The original Instagram was a photo-sharing app and grow quickly with the rise of the first iPhone and high-quality camera phones.
You can even shop inside the Instagram app. Many businesses use Instagram as an advertising tool to reach their target audience.
TikTok - Almost a billion monthly active users. TikTok is a social media platform for creating or watching short-form videos. Videos on TikTok need to be under 60 seconds with most videos on the platform under 15 seconds.
TikTok's most popular creator has over 100 million followers. TikTok is owned by a Chinese company called ByteDance, but there were talks in 2020 to sell TikTok to a U.S.-based company.
LinkedIn -760 million monthly active users Linkedin is one of the oldest social media platforms founded in 2013 and was purchased by Microsoft back in 2016 for 26 billion dollars.
Pinterest - 440 million monthly active users Pinterest was founded in 2010. It was created for finding sharing photos, videos, links, animations, and ideas online. It can be referred to as a digital scrapbook. The photo and video posts are called "pins" and pins are posted on "boards" There are Pinterest boards for just about any category and interest.
Snapchat - 350 million monthly active users Snapchat began in 2011 as a messaging platform where your text, photo, or video message immediately disappeared after being viewed.
It has become a full social media platform where you can follow people, share your own stories (posts on Snapchat), and even share your location with your friends.
Twitter - 330 million monthly active users Twitter is a social media platform that began in 2006 as a website for posting your thoughts with a 140-character limit called tweets. The limit increased to 280 and you can now share photos and video links on Twitter.
Discord - 100 million monthly active users Discord started in 2015 as a group chat platform focused on gaming that quickly grew to a social media platform. Discord is made up of servers which are groups or communities where you can chat, share your screen, share photos and videos, and even live stream.
