Nobody can say for certain who coined the term “social media”. Several people have claimed it, all pointing to the mid 1990s: AOL executive Ted Leonsis, early web executive Tina Sharkey and researcher Darrell Berry. Merriam-Webster dates the first known use of the phrase to 1994. The honest answer is that it came out of the early online community world of that decade, and more than one person was using it.

As for when social media started, most historians point to Six Degrees, launched in 1997, as the first recognisable social network. Since then we have had Friendster, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter (now X), Instagram, TikTok, Threads and Bluesky. Below we run through the main claims about the name, a short history of the platforms, and what all of it teaches a small business in 2026.

The term “social media” has several claimed inventors

In 2010 Forbes journalist Jeff Bercovici set out to find out who coined social media, and found several people with a claim. Here is what each said, and what could be checked.

• Tina Sharkey, who ran community building at the women’s website iVillage and later worked at AOL and BabyCenter, said she started using the phrase in 1994. She owns the domain socialmedia.com, but registered it in 1999, and Forbes found no public record of her using the term before then.
• Ted Leonsis, then a senior AOL executive, said the phrase came out of AOL in the early 1990s. Forbes found him quoted using it in 1997, which was the earliest press citation close to today’s meaning that it could find.
• Darrell Berry, a writer and researcher, said he began using the term in late 1994 while working on an online media environment called Matisse in Tokyo, and wrote a paper about “social media spaces” in May 1995.
• Chris Shipley, a technology analyst, is sometimes credited too. She told Forbes she helped popularise the phrase in 2004 while promoting a blogging conference called BlogOn, but did not claim to have invented it.

Forbes did not name a winner, and nobody has settled it since. Merriam-Webster’s dictionary entry gives 1994 as the first known use. Our take: the phrase almost certainly grew up in several places at once, as people building early online communities looked for a word for media made by its users rather than by publishers.

Social media started before the social networks

People were talking to strangers online long before anyone used the phrase. Dial-up bulletin board systems from the late 1970s let users post messages for others to read. Usenet newsgroups, chat rooms and services like AOL and CompuServe brought group discussion to many more people through the 1980s and 1990s.

What these lacked was the thing that defines a social network today: a personal profile connected to a visible list of friends. In their widely cited 2007 paper, researchers danah boyd and Nicole Ellison defined social network sites as services where you build a profile, list the people you are connected to, and browse those connections. By that test, the first one arrived in 1997.

Six Degrees to Facebook: the first wave

Six Degrees (1997)

SixDegrees.com, founded by Andrew Weinreich, let users create a profile and list their friends, and from 1998 browse those friends lists. It never became a sustainable business and closed at the turn of the millennium. Weinreich has said it was simply ahead of its time, and with so few people online back then, that is hard to argue with.

Friends Reunited (2000)

The UK had its own early hit. Friends Reunited launched in the summer of 2000, set up by Steve and Julie Pankhurst with their friend Jason Porter, to help people find old school friends. ITV bought it in 2005 in a deal reported at around £120 million plus performance payments. It closed for good in February 2016.

Friendster (2002) and MySpace (2003)

Friendster launched in 2002 and grew to hundreds of thousands of users by word of mouth before the press noticed. MySpace followed in 2003, and teenagers and bands piled in. News Corporation bought MySpace in July 2005 for $580 million. Within a few years both had been overtaken.

Facebook (2004)

Facebook launched in February 2004 as a Harvard-only site. It spread to other universities, then from September 2005 to schools and workplaces, and soon to anyone. Its real name approach and News Feed made it the default social network for much of the world, and for most businesses it became the first place they ever ran an online advert.

Related reading: How to Choose the Right Social Media Platforms for Your Business

Twitter to TikTok: the mobile and video wave

The next era was shaped by the smartphone. Short updates, photos and then video took over.

Platform	Launched	What changed
Twitter (now X)	2006	Short public posts in real time. Jack Dorsey sent the first tweet on 21 March 2006. Elon Musk bought the company in 2022 and it was renamed X in July 2023.
Instagram	2010	Mobile photo sharing with filters. Facebook bought it in 2012 for around $1 billion, and it later added Stories and Reels.
TikTok	2016 to 2018	ByteDance launched Douyin in China in 2016 and TikTok for other markets in 2017, then merged it with Musical.ly in 2018. Its recommendation feed showed that people will watch videos from accounts they do not follow.
Threads	2023	Meta’s text-based app, linked to Instagram accounts, launched in July 2023 and passed 100 million sign-ups within about five days.
Bluesky	2023 to 2024	A decentralised alternative to X that began as a project inside Twitter. It ran invite-only, then opened to everyone in February 2024.

TikTok’s arrival changed how every other platform works. Instagram, Facebook and YouTube all now push short vertical video and recommend content from accounts you have never followed. For businesses that was good news and bad news: a small account can reach a big audience with one good video, but followers no longer guarantee views.

Social media in 2026 is more fragmented than ever

Rather than one dominant network, audiences are now spread across many. Your customers might use Facebook groups for local recommendations, Instagram and TikTok for discovery, LinkedIn for work, and WhatsApp for almost everything else. Text-based conversation is split between X, Threads and Bluesky.

Regulation has also grown up. In January 2026 TikTok finalised a deal to create a new US joint venture with investors including Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX, ending years of uncertainty about a ban there. Governments, including in the UK and Australia, have brought in tougher rules on online safety and children’s use of social platforms. The rules of the game keep shifting, and businesses have little say in how.

Platforms come and go, so own your audience

Look back over thirty years and one pattern stands out: no platform is permanent. That is the most useful lesson the history of social media holds for a small business.

• Platforms close. Six Degrees, Friends Reunited, Vine and the consumer version of Google+ all shut down. Twitter announced Vine’s closure in October 2016, and Google+ closed to personal accounts in April 2019.
• Content can vanish. In 2019 MySpace confirmed that music uploaded between 2003 and 2015 had been lost during a server move, reported to be around 50 million songs.
• Reach changes overnight. In January 2018 Facebook said it would prioritise posts from friends and family over public content from businesses and publishers. Pages that relied on free reach saw it drop.
• Ownership and rules change. Twitter’s sale and rebrand, and TikTok’s long legal saga in the US, show how quickly the ground can move.

None of this means social media is not worth doing. For most of our clients it is one of the best ways to be found, build trust and stay front of mind. It does mean you should treat social platforms as rented space, and make sure the relationship with your customers also lives somewhere you control.

Your website is the home base

Your website is the one place online that you own outright. Nobody can change its algorithm or close it down. Every social post should give people a reason to visit it, whether that is a product page, a booking form or a useful guide. A fast, clear business website turns attention borrowed from a platform into enquiries and sales.

Your email list travels with you

An email list is the audience you keep whatever happens to any platform. If a social account is hacked, suspended or simply stops reaching people, you can still contact everyone who signed up. Offer something worth signing up for, such as a discount, a guide or early access, and mention it regularly on social media.

Spread your bets sensibly

You do not need to be everywhere. Pick the two or three platforms where your customers actually spend time, do them well, and keep an eye on new ones without rushing to join every launch. Claiming your business name on a new platform early costs nothing and keeps your options open.

Frequently asked questions

Who coined the term social media?

It is disputed. Ted Leonsis says it came out of AOL in the early 1990s, Tina Sharkey and Darrell Berry both say they used it from 1994, and Chris Shipley helped popularise it in 2004. Merriam-Webster dates the first known use to 1994.

When did social media start?

Online communities go back to bulletin boards in the late 1970s, but most historians name Six Degrees, launched in 1997, as the first social network site in the modern sense.

What was the first social media platform in the UK?

Many UK users first met social networking through Friends Reunited, which launched in 2000 to reconnect old school friends. Six Degrees and other US sites were available earlier but had far fewer UK users.

Is social media still worth it for small businesses?

Yes, for most businesses. It is where customers discover, check out and recommend local firms. The key is to use it to drive people to your website and email list, so you are not relying entirely on one platform.

Get social media working for your business

We have been helping UK businesses through every shift on social media since 2016, from the Facebook feed changes to the rise of TikTok and Threads. If you want a plan that grows your following and sends people to a site you own, take a look at our social media management and website design, or get in touch for a chat.