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, 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 - 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?