Looking back at innovations in social media - were they inevitable? And was it technology, or market-driven consumer behaviour that has created the tech giants.
Their history starts with computer bulletin boards systems (BBS), which started appearing in 1973 – dial-up point-to-point platforms where users could upload and download software and data, share messages and news. BBSs then took off in the 1990s with the development of smart modems that were dedicated to private email and messaging. As modem speeds increased, so did the use of BBS’s, with the same systems being used to publish online magazines - a revolution at the time.
Following this initial flourish, BBS’s then declined in use as Internet Service Providers (ISPs) were able to provide the many-to-many connection capability that overcame the limitation of BBS's point-to-point systems.
The early social media platforms in the late 1990s included SixDegrees, Yahoo Messenger and MSN Messenger, and were only followed by LinkedIn, Myspace, and Skype in the early 2000s. Friendster, launched in 2002, gained 3 million users in its first months but like many of the above, these platforms have either been overtaken or failed in what was an increasingly competitive market.
New developments in social media applications continued. Facebook was first launched in 2004, followed by Twitter in 2006, WhatsApp in 2009, Instagram in 2010, and Snapchat in 2011. These were the platforms that created user-friendly messaging and photo sharing capabilities, available at scale, where the fundamentals remain like those provided today.
Nonetheless, the social media market continued to develop, moving from messaging and photo sharing platforms to video sharing platforms. Instagram Video was launched in 2013 around the same time as Vine that was later acquired by Twitter albeit shut down in 2017 due to poor user growth and Twitter’s difficulty in retaining developer resources in a capacity-constrained and heated labour market.
An Inevitable Breakthrough
Though the technology had been available for some time, the video-sharing market was transformed by TikTok's global launch in 2017. TikTok provided a platform for users to post short videos in a sequential feed, which—thanks to concurrent advances in smartphone camera technology, mobile network coverage, and connectivity speeds—could be easily captured and shared instantly. A well-executed marketing campaign featuring celebrity endorsements and significant improvements in content recommendation algorithms helped TikTok reach one billion users within four years.
However, how predictable was this rapid adoption of video-sharing applications? Demand for video-sharing platforms had already been identified by YouTube, which launched in 2005 and was acquired by Google a year later—another instance showing the importance of business strategy. YouTube’s dominance in self-broadcasting between 2006 and 2013 was only disrupted with the emergence of short-form video apps like TikTok. Nonetheless, user preferences for longer video content persist, keeping YouTube as the established leader in this segment.
The inevitable development of existing social media platforms is easy to overlook; continual marketing, advertising, new interfaces, and mobile apps refresh are reinventing the user experience. Today, these companies are widely seen as places where “the magic happens.”
But is it really a revolution - or just technology-enabled evolution?
Evolution not Revolution
Contrary to perception, the technology market has not been shifting as rapidly as it might seem. In reality, social media’s evolution over the past two decades has centred on three major breakthroughs: message sharing, photo sharing, and video sharing.
The innovations that set successful companies apart from those that failed were rooted in enhancing user experience, finding new applications for existing technology, and investing in resources. Supporting technological advances—such as improved content algorithms, smartphone cameras, computing power, mobile network bandwidth, and interactive user interfaces - certainly played a role, but social media innovations were foreseeable once cameras and larger screens became standard in smartphones.
The demand for social media applications has been driven by impactful marketing and advertising campaigns, amplified by easy access to credit to buy smartphones, along with broader societal shifts in retail environments, which in turn altered consumer behaviour.
It is the normalisation of instant low-cost sharing of personal experiences across the globe has created a positive feedback loop and spurred exponential growth in the social media industry. Technology has only been an enabler, and the decades-long development roadmap has in fact constrained the pace of change.
