A social media timeline

It’s been a hot minute since I’ve updated this social media timeline. Do we say ‘hot minute’ anymore? Probably not, terms and pieces of culture (esp driven by younger generations) move quickly these days. Not unlike social media. See what I did there? I gave away my age.

This year, to update the timeline I did the usual digging into what social media platforms have launched in the past 2 years. And, as usual, not huge amounts of new content shows up. The newest (at the time of writing) is Moltbook which really showcases how things are changing in terms of agentic AI and how we humans engage with social media. Moltbook is there simply for AI agents to chat to each other, real humans need not apply and cannot take part; they can only watch. Feels a bit like watching an offshoot of real housewives and robot wars, but even less human. As a piece of cultural art and as a scientific project I think it’s great, really interesting to see how the windup AI agents (themselves often powered by the platforms behind the big LLMs), go at discussing topics.

The second thing I have been seeing is the rise in niche social platforms. Now, those astute amongst you will have noticed that this year’s timeline has many more platforms across all years than previous years. This is due to the fact that there is only so much time to dig into what platforms have been developed and launched, and this year I did my normal research and also employed social searching for new platforms – I get served content for these fairly often, as well as going through the top ‘social media’ apps in my native app store.

Going back to the idea of niche platforms, this is not out of the blue, for a while now users of social have been leaning into niche communities that allow users to develop a multifaceted presentation of self that encourages us to go deep into the user communities that interest us. Into witches? #witchtok is for you. What about #horsetok? Nearly 1m posts for you to enjoy. Even within user community groups we can go more niche: BookTok can be subdivided into huge numbers of more trope-specific digital communities: #bookboyfriend, 1.5m tags; #grumpysunshine, 467k tags; #classicliterature, 76k tags.

The point is that the more we use social the more we want it to reflect us, and this often means both looking outward at trends, brands, celebrities and pop culture, but also looking inward at what we care about most as individuals – how we see and define our identities, and finding groups that also identify as we do. The same is happening in our social platforms.

Niche platforms have always been around, but now they are more prominent, and somewhat more specialist. Want an app to create and share lists? Ditto Lists has you covered. Want a platform that helps you find people also into really niche things to help you feel more connected? Try Cliq or Belong. Into crypto? Sl8 is for you.

Part of this is being pushed by the lean into nostalgia, itself being driven by Gen Z and Millennials who seem to be longing for a time of more simplicity, where we could sink into the Gilmore Girls, and feel cozy and safe. We also see this culturally with the rise of what some call recession pop; and anecdotally I have had young uni students walk into my classroom singing songs that we used to go out dancing to back when I was at uni. Apps like Retro and WT social are repackaging content (images and news) in a streamlined format in a way that feels almost like ‘getting back to the roots’ of sharing specialised content. I’m seeing this more and more: streamlined platforms that encourage real connection around one or two key themes (photos, lists, songs, short form content, real life meetups, etc), somewhat backing away from the infinite scroll of the bigger players in the social field.

Will we stop using the big players? No. We love TikTok, Instagram, Snap, Pinterest, and some people even still use X. We use these platforms, get used to their affordances, and after a while, perhaps even they become linked to this sense of longing for the past, where we open them because that’s what we’ve become used to, because it’s where our friends and families live online, because it’s how we are accustomed to searching for answers (not going into social search here, but it’s very important in how we use social); but more mindfully, there may be a shift coming.

As a caveat, I am using western social and access and the iStore and Google and western social media to search for these platforms, so it is Western-centric. Secondly, this is not a complete list. But I do my best to include the ones that I think are relevant. Thirdly, a lot of the things in this short piece could be cited, but also you can read my upcoming book, or I can point you to expert Helen Simpson on a lot of this core info.

If you want to make use of this infographic, drop me a line. Happy to share, as long as I’m credited.