Meebo was an instant messaging and social networking service provider. It was founded in September 2005 by Sandy Jen, Seth Sternberg, and Elaine Wherry, and was based in Mountain View, California. Initially the company offered a web-based instant messenger service, extending its offer in more general online chat and even social networking directions. In June 2012, Google acquired Meebo to merge the company's staff with the Google+ developers team.
Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes, its name derives from the face book directories often given to American university students. Membership was initially limited to Harvard students, gradually expanding to other North American universities. Since 2006, Facebook allows everyone to register from 13 years old, except in the case of a handful of nations, where the age limit is 14 years. As of December 2022, Facebook claimed 3 billion monthly active users. As of October 2023, Facebook ranked as the 3rd most visited website in the world, with 22.56% of its traffic coming from the United States. It was the most downloaded mobile app of the 2010s.
Facebook is a social networking service originally launched as TheFacebook on February 4, 2004, before changing its name to simply Facebook in August 2005. It was founded by Mark Zuckerberg and his college roommates and fellow Harvard University students, in particular Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes. The website's membership was initially limited by the founders to Harvard students, but was expanded to other colleges in the Boston area, the Ivy League, and gradually most universities in the United States and Canada, corporations, and by September 2006, to everyone with a valid email address along with an age requirement of being 13 or older.
Kik Messenger, commonly called Kik, is a freeware instant messaging mobile app from the Canadian company Kik Interactive, available on iOS and Android operating systems.
Instagram is a photo and video sharing social networking service owned by Meta Platforms. It allows users to upload media that can be edited with filters, be organized by hashtags, and be associated with a location via geographical tagging. Posts can be shared publicly or with preapproved followers. Users can browse other users' content by tags and locations, view trending content, like photos, and follow other users to add their content to a personal feed. A Meta-operated image-centric social media platform, it is available on iOS, Android, Windows 10, and the web. Users can take photos and edit them using built-in filters and other tools, then share them on other social media platforms like Facebook. It supports 32 languages including English, Spanish, French, Korean, and Japanese.
WhatsApp is an instant messaging (IM) and voice-over-IP (VoIP) service owned by technology conglomerate Meta. It allows users to send text, voice messages and video messages, make voice and video calls, and share images, documents, user locations, and other content. WhatsApp's client application runs on mobile devices, and can be accessed from computers. The service requires a cellular mobile telephone number to sign up. In January 2018, WhatsApp released a standalone business app called WhatsApp Business which can communicate with the standard WhatsApp client.
GroupMe is a mobile group messaging app owned by Microsoft. It was launched in May 2010 by the private company GroupMe. In August 2011, GroupMe delivered over 100 million messages each month and by June 2012, that number jumped to 550 million. In 2013, GroupMe had over 12 million registered users.
Messenger, also known as Facebook Messenger, is an American proprietary instant messaging app and platform developed by Meta Platforms. Originally developed as Facebook Chat in 2008, the company revamped its messaging service in 2010, released standalone iOS and Android apps in 2011, and released standalone Facebook Portal hardware for Messenger calling in 2018. In April 2015, Facebook launched a dedicated website interface, Messenger.com, and separated the messaging functionality from the main Facebook app, allowing users to use the web interface or download one of the standalone apps. In April 2020, Facebook released a Messenger desktop app for Windows and macOS.
Nimbuzz is a proprietary cross-platform instant messaging and social media and mobile payment developed by Kuraakani Online Private Limited, with the origins of its technology dating back to the early 2000s. As of March 2013, Nimbuzz had 150 million users in 200 countries. By April 2014, Nimbuzz was growing by more than 210,000 new registrations per day. In October 2014, now with over 200 million users, New Call acquired 70% of Nimbuzz, valuing the app at $250 million. Under CEO Sujit Acharya's leadership, Nimbuzz suite of applications enables users to enjoy end-to-end encrypted free calls, instant messaging, games, file sharing, social networking, mobile payments & movies on their mobile device. Nimbuzz has more than 3 million lines of code. Initially, Nimbuzz offered discounted calling rates to most countries in the world. The platform processed more than a billion call minutes and in excess of 100 billion messages a month.
A sticker is a detailed illustration of a character that represents an emotion or action that is a mix of cartoons and Japanese smiley-like "emojis" sent through instant messaging platforms. They have more variety than emoticons and have a basis from internet "reaction face" culture due to their ability to portray body language with a facial reaction. Stickers are elaborate, character-driven emoticons and give people a lightweight means to communicate through kooky animations.
Spring.me was a social networking service. Until a rebranding in 2013, it was known as Formspring, a question-and-answer-based social network launched in 2009 by Ade Olonoh, the founder of online form builder Formstack.
Whisper is a proprietary Android mobile app available without charge. It is a form of anonymous social media, allowing users to post and share photo and video messages anonymously, although this claim has been challenged with privacy concerns over Whisper's handling of user data. The postings, called "whispers", consist of text superimposed over an image, and the background imagery is either automatically retrieved from Whisper's search engine or uploaded by the user. The app, launched in March 2012, is the main product of the media company WhisperText LLC, which was co-founded by CEO Michael Heyward, the son of the entertainment executive Andy Heyward, and Brad Brooks, who is the CEO of mobile messaging service TigerText. Since 2015, the service has sought to become more of a brand advertising platform, with promotional partnerships with Netflix, NBCUniversal, Disney, HBO, and MTV. According to TechCrunch, as of March 2017, Whisper has a total of 17 billion monthly pageviews on its mobile and desktop websites, social channels and publisher network, with 250 million monthly users across 187 countries. It is owned by MediaLab. In October 2022, Whisper was removed from the Apple App Store, and was added to the App Store again but has been removed in 2023 again.
Secret was an iOS and Android app service that allowed people to share messages anonymously within their circle of friends, friends of friends, and publicly. It differs from other anonymous sharing apps such as PostSecret, Whisper, and Yik Yak in that it was intended for sharing primarily with friends, potentially making it more interesting and addictive for people reading the updates. It was founded by David Byttow, the former lead for Square Wallet, and Chrys Bader-Wechseler, a former Google product manager at Google+, Photovine and YouTube. Bader-Wechseler left the company in January 2015, with the stated reason that the company's shift away from beautiful design and towards more minimalistic design meant that he felt he was no longer the best person to be at the helm of the company. Byttow announced the shutdown of the app and the company on April 29, 2015.
Anonymous social media is a subcategory of social media wherein the main social function is to share and interact around content and information anonymously on mobile and web-based platforms. Another key aspect of anonymous social media is that content or information posted is not connected with particular online identities or profiles.
Yik Yak is a pseudonymous social media smartphone application that initially launched in 2013 and relaunched in 2021. The app, which is available for iOS and (formerly) Android, allows college students to create and view discussion threads within a 5-mile (8.0 km) radius. It is similar to other anonymous sharing apps such as Nearby, but differs from others such as Whisper in that it is intended for sharing primarily with those in proximity to the user.
Onavo, Inc. was an Israeli mobile web analytics company owned by Facebook, Inc.. The company primarily performed its activities via consumer mobile apps, including the virtual private network (VPN) service Onavo Protect, which analysed web traffic sent through the VPN to provide statistics on the usage of other apps.
Eyegroove was a social media service headquartered in San Francisco for creating short music videos with augmented reality effects founded by Scott Snibbe and Graham McDermott. The company was established in 2013 and released the first version of its app on iOS that year. Through the app, users could create thirty second creative and lip-syncing music videos and choose musical tracks to accompany them, use different speed options and add time-based augmented reality filters and effects. The app's social media features included an Instagram-like feed, hashtags for creative memes, user tagging, and comment threads.
Gas, formerly known as Melt as well as Crush, was an American anonymous social media app. Launched in August 2022, the app is oriented towards high schoolers. The app was developed by Nikita Bier, Isaiah Turner, and former Facebook engineer Dave Schatz.
