The Visual Rise And Fall Of Every Social Network

Behold - a visual representation of the ascent (and descent) of (most) social networks, plotted using data from Google Search trends on a 6-month moving average.

Also, it was created by someone who doesn't know what a social network is.

I found a few things about this chart interesting, in no particular order.

First, ICQ. That really takes me back. It was with the venerable ICQ that I arranged all of my Ebay deliveries back when I was a competitor of oddball Brok Pierce/IGE and Yantis. I tried to login to my ICQ (8 digit code, anyone better?) just recently and it was regrettably unable to recover my account.

I was surprised to see how many users ICQ maintained and for how long. Of course, it should not even be on this list. ICQ is definitively NOT a social network. It is an instant-messaging program almost identical to AOL Instant Messager. Having ICQ on here makes no sense. Having ICQ on here without having AOL Instant Messager on here makes even less sense.

Second, Slashdot is not a social network. It was a news-conglomeration site with comment posting on each article. Honestly, it wasn't much different from 1000 other sites that post news and updates from around the web and enable comments on their posts. Slashdot is no more a social network than the comments of the New York Times online articles are a social network.

Exhibit B - Not a social network.

Honestly, MySpace ought to be the first site featured on this chart, as it was truly (and generally considered to be) the first real social network. I was truly surprised to see the peak so late for MySpace, as I recall my roommate was already deeply entrenched in MySpace by 2004, in an attempt to woo the internet ladies who I'm told may have actually used that site.

Little did we know, we were already living in the future (ahem.)

WhatsApp is certainly putting in a strong showing, more than I had expected.

Reddit, on the other hand, is peaking more slowly and later than I expected. I grew disgusted and mostly swore of Reddit by the massive censorship/UpVoat exodus, but had been wanting to leave for some time. That was already at least 4-6 years ago, 2012-2013. They've managed to continue to climb in the face of increasingly negative public sentiment and user exodus, however I suspect they will be the next star to fall from grace.

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