Social media platforms by launch year

by Writersroom Boardwalk: Snapchat

Twenty-five platforms, sorted by the year they showed up, and the ones still standing say a lot. The earliest entry on the board is Classmates.com, live since 1995. SixDegrees came two years later, in 1997, and was gone by 2001. LiveJournal has held on since 1999. Friendster lasted from 2002 until it shut down in 2015. Myspace and LinkedIn both arrived in 2003 and both still operate. The 2004 class was Flickr, Facebook, and Orkut, and Orkut is the one that closed, in 2014. YouTube and Reddit both started in 2005 and are still active. X (Twitter) followed in 2006, Tumblr in 2007, Weibo in 2009, and all three remain active. Instagram launched in 2010, Snapchat in 2011, and neither has folded. Google+ also began in 2011 and shut down in 2019. Pinterest started in 2012 and is still running. Vine had 2013 to 2017, then closed. Discord came in 2015 and is active, as are Mastodon in 2016, TikTok in 2017, BeReal in 2020, and Threads and Bluesky, both from 2023. The list runs oldest to newest, and the graveyard section is shorter than you would guess.