Before TikTok and Instagram could run, platforms like Vine and MySpace had to first walk and pave the way for modern-day social media.
Believe it or not, TikTok and Instagram didn’t always dominate the social media world, nor did they start it. Before platforms such as Medium or Blogger, Tumblr was one of the main outlets for people to share their thoughts, interests, adventures, and photos.
Before Facebook became the main community-based platform, we had MySpace.
Watching how the social media landscape has changed over the years is an interesting sight to see, so let’s take a look at the platforms we used to love but have now forgotten about.
Vine
The platform that paved the way for TikTok’s success, Vine, was launched back in 2013. It was created for users to upload short six-second videos for their friends and the public to laugh about. This app grew into a popular creator platform with over 200 million users and became the platform where influencers such as Shawn Mendes and Jake Paul got their big break.
Unfortunately, even with the influx of active users, the rising competition of Instagram and Snapchat forced Vine to throw in the towel due to them not being able to keep up with the new monetization avenues for their videos.
For those who do remember Vine, it will remain in our hearts forever!
Google+
Google+ was an attempt to create their version of Instagram or Facebook. Users were able to share photos and new updates to different groups of friends called “Circles” and also have group chats called “Hangouts”.
In order to try to draw more usage and interest to the platform, they even tried to integrate Google+ with everything, including YouTube. This ultimately became way too complicated for users.
As you can imagine, this app quickly lost the interest of its users. The layout wasn’t appealing, and the app was all-around confusing. So, Google called it quits in 2019.
YikYak
Ahh YikYak, the unique short-form messaging platform (like X) that combined features that now X and Reddit have. What made this app interesting was the local community aspect of it. To see who posted, you would need to be within a five-mile radius of the poster. If you weren’t, it would show up as anonymous.
You could also vote on posts that you liked and disliked (like Reddit) and the most popular post was pushed to the top of the page.
YikYak was more popular on college campuses because it allowed students to connect and chat back and forth. Unfortunately, as the internet does, the platform became toxic. Unlike Reddit, YikYak didn’t have moderators.
So, after a lot of hate speech and cyberbullying, college campuses blocked the usage of the platform and users lost interest, leading to its shutdown in 2017.
There seems to be a bit of a pattern here. 2017 was the death of many great platforms. What is a platform you remember that is no longer with us?
