It’s crazy how social media has played a part in generations since the early 2000’s and how adolescents and adults adapted so easily to the idea of posting their lives online. From MySpace to Snapchat, there’s always been something in-between that we could either post a status, a picture or video to. All social media networks had their glory days at some point, so why not reminisce about the gone, but not forgotten social networks followed by “the stars” of this generation. It all started with..
Myspace
Created in 2003, MySpace was Facebook as a test-run version. This is where the idea of adding friends, posting pictures, sharing what music you were listening to all started. Speaking of pictures, remember the angles they used to be taken at? Remember when the peace signs we held up weren’t covering our faces? Remember that the pictures that we were taking were either from a flip phone or camera; you know you remember.
Dailybooth
Although it was only around for three years, Dailybooth was practically a fetus Instagram. Out of the three years, only three updates occurred (meanwhile today, most update every few months). Dailybooth was a place for people to photoblog and eventually people could @reply to other people’s photos and favorite/like them. In 2012, the site shutdown only for Instagram to take the spotlight.
Pheed
Pheed was a social network that was around for a hot minute back in 2012 and shut down in April of 2016. When I had first heard of this site as a 14 year old when it was released, I remember kids in my area thought it would be the “cooler Twitter” and we would all connect better through this website… I had an account for three days if that says anything.
Leaving it to the professionals…
As of now, I think it’s safe to say the top four most successful long-running social networks would be
In 2004 Facebook was launched and became a place for twelve year olds, their moms, and even their moms’ moms to hangout and post about their lives. Facebook is still very popular today and is a great way to reconnect with old teachers and family members that you may not see all the time.
Launching in 2006, Twitter is the place to be from twelve to whatever age our potential U.S. Presidents are. While having similar features to Facebook, the character restriction of only being able to to use 140 characters per tweet stimulates creativity in what people are saying by getting the immediate message across. Being able to tweet, post pictures, videos and broadcast, it’s a simpler version of Facebook that you can also connect with celebrities on as well! Britney Spears follows me on there, so that’s pretty awesome; thanks Twitter. 
Youtube & Vine
Longterm acting/musical careers have been made from users uploading to these two social networks and to say the least, that is amazing. With Youtube being created in 2005, over the past 11 years it has evolved into a place where people create skits, beauty videos, cooking shows, how-to’s, vlog their daily lives and even a place to pirate old shows/movies. Vine was created in 2013 and relates to Twitter in the way where creativity is key when limiting the message the user wants to get across in six seconds. Both networks have done wonders as popular creators would not be where they are today without the platforms.
Pinterest, Snapchat and Instagram, you have some competition. While Pinterest is a way to find inspiration/creative ideas, while Snapchat allows a way to temporarily document what’s going on and while Instagram is a way to photo/video-blog these networks are missing one thing-connection. Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and Vine have allowed people to reach out to each other from various parts of the world and without their existences who knows where society would stand at today. With that being said, we can only wonder what social networks are to come and what can top the famous four.
