From MySpace to TikTok
Top 8s, six-second Vines, the For You Page, and the TikTok ban that almost happened. A speedrun of the platforms that shaped culture.
Every platform invented a new way to be famous, and each one changed what music, comedy and fashion looked like. Here's the speedrun.
2003
MySpace
Custom profile pages with glitter and autoplaying songs, and the Top 8, where you publicly ranked your friends. Musicians broke out here first. Soulja Boy's "Crank That" blew up through MySpace and YouTube in 2007.
April 23, 2005
YouTube
The first video is "Me at the zoo", 19 seconds of co-founder Jawed Karim at the San Diego Zoo. Google buys YouTube the next year for $1.65 billion.
2006
Twitter
Posts are capped at 140 characters, doubled to 280 in 2017. It becomes the place where celebrity drama, breaking news and beefs play out in real time.
2010
Instagram
Square photos and filters. Facebook buys it for $1 billion in 2012. "Doing it for the 'gram" enters the language.
2011
Snapchat
Photos that disappear. Its Stories feature (2013) gets copied by Instagram in 2016, then by basically everyone.
2013
Vine
Six-second looping videos. It birthed a generation of comedians and stars, from King Bach and Lele Pons to Shawn Mendes. Twitter shut it down by early 2017, and people still trade "best Vines" compilations.
2018
TikTok
China's ByteDance merges the lip-sync app Musical.ly into TikTok. The For You Page shows you videos from strangers based on what you watch, so you don't need followers to go viral. Lil Nas X's "Old Town Road" blows up there and spends a then-record 19 weeks at No. 1 in 2019.
2022–2023
Twitter becomes X
Elon Musk buys Twitter for $44 billion in October 2022 and renames it X in July 2023. Blue checks become paid. Meta launches Threads, and Bluesky opens to the public in early 2024.
2024–2026
The TikTok ban saga
A 2024 US law says ByteDance has to sell TikTok's US business or the app gets banned. In January 2025 the app goes dark in the US for about half a day, then comes back after President Trump promises to delay enforcement. In January 2026 a deal finally closes, moving TikTok's US business into a new joint venture backed mainly by Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX.
Pop quiz
0/4 answered
Q1
What was the first video ever uploaded to YouTube?
Q2
How long could a Vine be?
Q3
TikTok merged with which app in 2018?
Q4
What happened with TikTok in the US in January 2026?