116 Fun Facts About Social Media

Which early social network, launched in 1997, was named after a theory of how people are connected?

SixDegrees.com. YouthStream Media Networks bought it in 1999 for $125 million in stock, barely three years after it launched.

Friendster turned down a $30 million buyout offer in 2003 from which search giant?

Google. Founder Jonathan Abrams raised venture capital instead, and by 2004 he was out of the company after falling out with those investors.

Which company bought Myspace for $580 million in July 2005?

News Corporation. By April 2008, though, Facebook had caught up with Myspace in monthly visitors worldwide.

Which pop star co-bought Myspace in June 2011 for roughly $35 million?

Justin Timberlake. His partner in the deal, Specific Media, later renamed itself Viant and was bought by Time Inc., Myspace and all, in 2016.

Which TheFacebook co-founder fought the company in court after his stake was diluted in 2005?

Eduardo Saverin. The two sides settled in 2009, and Facebook put his name back on its list of founders.

What was Zuckerberg's 2003 Harvard site that asked users to pick the 'hotter' of two students called?

Facemash. It came down within days after student groups protested, and Harvard's Administrative Board did not make him leave school.

Which video-sharing site added a 'like' button as early as November 2005?

Vimeo. Developer Andrew Pile said the team liked Digg's concept but didn't want to call them 'Diggs', so they came up with 'Likes'.

Which whistleblower went public weeks before Facebook rebranded as Meta?

Frances Haugen. She had copied tens of thousands of internal documents, including research on how Instagram affects teenagers.

YouTube's three founders had all previously worked at which company?

PayPal. Their former PayPal finance chief, Roelof Botha, was by then at Sequoia, which put $3.5 million into YouTube.

'Me at the zoo', the first YouTube video, shows Jawed Karim in front of which animals?

Elephants. In 2013 Karim used the clip's page to protest a new rule for commenting on YouTube videos.

Twitter began in 2006 as a side project inside which company?

Odeo. Twitter's first prototype was a tool for the podcasting startup's staff, and Evan Williams later bought back its investors' stakes.

When Twitter doubled its 140-character limit in 2017, which language's tweets kept the old limit?

Japanese. One character there can carry far more meaning, so only a small share of Japanese tweets had been hitting 140.

Elon Musk acquired Twitter in October 2022 for approximately how much?

$44B. Nine months later Musk renamed Twitter X and retired its famous blue bird logo.

What was Twitter's overload error image of birds hoisting a sea creature nicknamed?

The fail whale. Artist Yiying Lu had first drawn it, as 'Lifting a Dreamer', to send birthday wishes to faraway friends.

Who first proposed using the # symbol to group tweets, in a 2007 tweet?

Chris Messina. He says Twitter told him hashtags were 'for nerds', yet they caught on that autumn during the San Diego wildfires.

Before Twitter, the # symbol already labeled channels on which chat system?

IRC. Its # channel names inspired the 2007 proposal that brought hashtags to Twitter.

Instagram began life as a location check-in app with what name?

Burbn. Kevin Systrom had raised a $500,000 seed round for the check-in app before he and his co-founder cut it down to photo sharing.

Facebook bought Instagram in April 2012 for approximately how much?

$1B. Britain's competition regulator and the US Federal Trade Commission both examined the deal before clearing it in August 2012.

Which post overtook the record-holding egg as the most-liked Instagram post in December 2022?

Lionel Messi celebrating the World Cup. The egg it toppled had been posted in 2019 with a caption urging people to beat Kylie Jenner's record.

The @world_record_egg account, which set Instagram's most-liked record in 2019, was revealed to belong to whom?

A British advertising creative. Chris Godfrey and two friends then turned the egg into a Hulu ad raising mental health awareness.

Which name did the ephemeral-photo app founded by Evan Spiegel launch under on iOS in July 2011?

Picaboo. Reggie Brown, who pitched the disappearing-photo idea, was forced out within months and later won a settlement.

The ghost mascot 'Ghostface Chillah' is named after a member of which hip-hop group?

Wu-Tang Clan. When Reggie Brown later sued his co-founders, he said he had come up with the ghost himself.

Which LinkedIn co-founder later became a famous venture capitalist?

Reid Hoffman. Years before LinkedIn, he had started SocialNet, a site for meeting people, mainly for dating.

Which company bought LinkedIn in 2016 for $26.2 billion?

Microsoft. To win the last regulator's approval, it promised rival professional networks could keep plugging into Office.

Reddit was founded in June 2005 by two roommates at which school?

Virginia. Right after graduating, they joined Paul Graham's first Y Combinator class, where the idea for Reddit took shape.

What is the name of Reddit's alien mascot?

Snoo. Alexis Ohanian drew the alien himself, and it became Reddit's logo.

Which site did Ben Silbermann launch in 2010 after his shopping app Tote failed to take off?

Pinterest. Tote's users rarely bought anything, but they kept saving favourite items, and that habit gave Silbermann the idea.

Which live-streaming app did Twitter buy in early 2015, before the app had even launched?

Periscope. Twitter shut it down in March 2021, calling the app an unsustainable 'maintenance-mode' product.

Vine, the looping video app Twitter bought for $30 million in 2012, limited clips to how long?

Six seconds. It couldn't keep up once Instagram and other rivals added short video, so Twitter shut it down.

Which company bought Tumblr for $1.1 billion in 2013?

Yahoo. Six years later Verizon, which had taken over Yahoo, sold Tumblr to Automattic, the owner of WordPress.com.

In July 2023, Meta's Threads set a record for consumer apps by reaching 100 million users in how long?

Five days. Within a week of that milestone, tracking firms reported its daily active users and time spent were already falling.

Which former Twitter CEO started Bluesky and later left its board?

Jack Dorsey. He announced Bluesky in 2019 as a small research team inside Twitter, while he was still running the company.

Which country's internet forum recorded the first known use of the word 'selfie', in 2002?

Australia. The word was new, but the idea wasn't: Robert Cornelius took a photographic self-portrait in Philadelphia in 1839.

Which of these stars squeezed into Ellen DeGeneres's famous 2014 Oscars selfie?

Meryl Streep. The photo sent Twitter into a meltdown as fans rushed to retweet it, briefly knocking the site offline.

Which scientist coined the word 'meme' in 1976?

Richard Dawkins. In The Selfish Gene he shortened the Greek-based 'mimeme' because he wanted a word that sounded a bit like 'gene'.

Which New York museum holds Shigetaka Kurita's original set of 176 emoji?

MoMA. DoCoMo had lost teenage customers when a newer pager dropped its heart symbol, and that pushed Kurita to design emoji.

Which emoji did Oxford Dictionaries name its word of the year in 2015?

Face with Tears of Joy. SwiftKey data showed it made up 20% of emoji used in the UK in 2015, up from 4% a year earlier.

Which two companies did Facebook agree to buy in 2014?

WhatsApp and Oculus VR. Oculus had only put out development kits of its Rift headset when Facebook agreed to pay about $2 billion.

Who was automatically added as every new Myspace user's first friend?

Tom Anderson. After leaving Myspace, he took up photography at Burning Man in 2011 and became a landscape photographer.

What did Twitter's founders first call the service?

twttr. Evan Williams later tweeted that Noah Glass never got enough credit, and that he came up with the name.

Which magazine publisher bought Reddit from its founders?

Conde Nast. Steve Huffman left in 2009, three years after the sale, then came back to run Reddit as CEO in 2015.

Facebook's famous early motto was 'Move fast and' what?

Break things. In 2014 Zuckerberg swapped it for 'Move fast with stable infrastructure', admitting the new motto wasn't as catchy.

About how many hours of video were uploaded to YouTube every minute as of May 2019?

About 500. At that rate, one person could spend an entire lifetime watching just a single day's uploads.

Instagram Stories, launched in 2016, copied its format from which rival?

Snapchat. Kevin Systrom admitted 'they deserve all the credit', while insisting it wasn't about who invented the format.

Jawed Karim said missing clips of the 2004 tsunami and which event inspired YouTube?

The Super Bowl halftime controversy. YouTube actually began as a video-dating site, with the slogan 'Tune in, Hook up'.

As of 2023, in which Canadian province did Facebook set its minimum age at 14 instead of 13?

Quebec. Facebook says it requires the higher age there to observe local law, as it does in South Korea and Spain.

What did Elon Musk cite in July 2022 when he tried to walk away from buying Twitter?

Spam bot accounts. Twitter sued to hold him to the deal, and weeks before the trial was due, he agreed to go through with it.

Kevin Systrom co-founded Instagram with which engineer, later his partner on the AI news app Artifact?

Mike Krieger. In May 2024 he joined the AI company Anthropic as its chief product officer.

Until 2015, every Instagram photo had to be framed in which shape?

The 640-pixel square matched the width of the iPhone screen at the time; the limit was raised to 1080 pixels and other shapes in 2015.

When Instagram's Android app launched in April 2012, how quickly did it pass one million downloads?

Under a day. Days later, Facebook agreed to buy the company.

In a 2022 test, Instagram hid which tab on hashtag pages?

Recent. Instagram had already removed that tab temporarily before the 2020 US election, to slow the spread of misinformation.

What was IGTV, which Instagram launched in June 2018?

A vertical video app. Instagram shut the standalone app in 2022 and shifted its video focus to Reels.

Which executive ran both Instagram and Threads at Meta when Threads launched in 2023?

Adam Mosseri. He said Threads would not do anything to encourage politics and hard news on the platform.

Instagram rolled out Reels in which country in 2020, soon after TikTok was banned there?

India. Then, as the US weighed a TikTok ban of its own, Instagram launched Reels in America too.

After the 2022 'Make Instagram Instagram again' revolt, Instagram dropped which test?

A full-screen feed. Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner had shared the protest post, and Instagram also promised to push fewer recommended videos.

The 2014 Ice Bucket Challenge raised money to fight which disease?

ALS: donations from the challenge funded Project MinE, whose researchers identified NEK1, a new ALS gene, in 2016.

In December 2018, Tumblr banned what kind of posts from its site?

Adult content: the ban came days after Apple pulled Tumblr's app from its App Store over illegal images of children found on the site.

Which was the first YouTube video to reach a billion views?

Gangnam Style: as its views neared the limit of YouTube's 32-bit view counter, YouTube moved the counter to 64-bit.

When Facebook agreed to buy Instagram in April 2012, how many employees did the startup have?

13: the whole team moved to Facebook, which promised that Instagram would keep growing independently.

Which photo app prompts users once a day, at a random time, to post with both phone cameras?

BeReal: after it topped Apple's US App Store in July 2022, Instagram launched a similar 'Dual' camera feature.

Which lip-sync video app did ByteDance buy in 2017 and merge into TikTok?

Musical.ly: in 2019 CFIUS, the US panel that screens foreign deals for security risks, began reviewing ByteDance's purchase of the app.

Which invite-only audio chat app took off in early 2021 after Elon Musk hosted a talk there?

Clubhouse: at the height of the craze, Twitter reportedly discussed buying it for about $4 billion.

The social network Orkut, huge in Brazil and India before closing in 2014, was named after what?

The engineer who built it: in 2008, control of Orkut Büyükkökten's network moved from California to Brazil, home to much of its user base.

Which social network did AOL buy for $850 million in 2008, only for its founders to buy it back for $1 million?

Bebo: the Birches bought it back after it went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2013, then sold it to Amazon's Twitch in 2019.

Posts on Mastodon, the decentralised social network, were long nicknamed what?

Toots: the nickname has since faded, and many users now just call them posts.

Which chat app did Jason Citron's studio build after its mobile battle game Fates Forever failed to take off?

Discord: making Fates Forever showed the team how poorly existing voice chat served players trying to coordinate in games.

The dress in a 2015 Tumblr photo that split the internet turned out to be which colors?

Blue and black was confirmed by the maker, Roman Originals, which sold out of the dress within 30 minutes and then made a single white and gold one for charity.

Two million people joined a joke 2019 Facebook event to storm which secretive US military site?

Area 51 saw only about 150 people turn up at its gates on the day, and none got in; the creator, Matty Roberts, had posted the event as a joke.

What did Elon Musk carry into Twitter's headquarters in a video he tweeted in October 2022?

A kitchen sink came through the lobby with Musk on October 26, the day before the takeover closed with his tweet "the bird is freed".

Which winner of 23 Grand Slam singles titles married Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian in 2017?

Serena Williams and Alexis Ohanian married in New Orleans that November, weeks after their daughter Olympia was born, with Beyoncé among the guests.

Which Rick Astley hit are people tricked into opening when a disguised link 'rickrolls' them?

Never Gonna Give You Up became the bait in May 2007, when a 4chan user linked its video in place of the trailer for Grand Theft Auto IV.

Which Lil Nas X song hit number one in 2019 after TikTok's cowboy-themed 'Yeehaw Challenge'?

Old Town Road was pulled from Billboard's country chart for not being country enough, then spent 19 straight weeks at number one on the Hot 100.

Which actor's first Instagram post, a 2019 sitcom reunion selfie, jammed the follow button?

Jennifer Aniston had avoided social media for years; her Friends cast selfie drew a million followers in just over five hours, then a Guinness World Record.

A 2017 plea for a year of free chicken nuggets from which chain became the most-retweeted tweet?

Wendy's told Carter Wilkerson he would need 18 million retweets; he fell far short, but the chain handed over the nuggets once his tweet took the record in 34 days.

Kabosu, the rescue dog whose 2010 photo became the 'doge' meme, was which breed?

Shiba Inu Kabosu was adopted from a shelter in 2008 after her puppy mill shut down, and her image later fronted Dogecoin, the first cryptocurrency based on a meme.

Which YouTuber, real name Jimmy Donaldson, recreated Squid Game in real life for a $456,000 prize?

MrBeast had 456 people play the show's games for real, and Squid Game creator Hwang Dong-hyuk has reacted positively to such recreations.

Which actor earned an Oscar nomination for playing Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network?

Jesse Eisenberg planned to meet Zuckerberg and even decided to drive to Facebook's offices, but the producers would not allow it for legal reasons.

Which UK consultancy harvested up to 87 million Facebook profiles to target political ads?

Cambridge Analytica got the data through a survey app called This Is Your Digital Life, and it closed down in May 2018, weeks after the story broke.

A family statement in August 2020 announcing which actor's death became the most-liked tweet?

Chadwick Boseman had been diagnosed with colon cancer four years earlier, and the diagnosis only became public with the tweet announcing his death.

Which country singer sparked a 2020 meme by posting four portraits, one for each of four apps?

Dolly Parton showed how she would present herself on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram, and celebrities quickly posted their own versions of the Dolly Parton challenge.

Which internet-famous pet, real name Tardar Sauce, rose to fame from a 2012 Reddit photo?

Grumpy Cat owed her permanent scowl to an underbite and feline dwarfism; she died in May 2019, aged seven.

Which celebrity beat CNN in a race to become the first Twitter user with one million followers?

Ashton Kutcher won what the site called its "Million followers contest", and later turned management of his account over to a team at his media company.

Which Fleetwood Mac hit re-charted in 2020 after a TikTok of a skateboarder sipping juice?

Dreams soundtracked Nathan Apodaca's skateboard ride to work after his truck broke down, and Mick Fleetwood and Stevie Nicks then posted their own versions.

Which Twitter lookalike did Donald Trump's media company launch in February 2022?

Truth Social calls its posts "Truths" and its shares "ReTruths", and it reached number one on Apple's App Store chart on launch day.

The slang word 'stan', meaning an obsessive fan, comes from a 2000 song by which rapper?

Eminem's "Stan" tells the story of an obsessive, delusional fan, and the word it inspired entered the Oxford English Dictionary in 2017.

Which mystery word ended Donald Trump's May 2017 tweet 'Despite the constant negative press'?

Covfefe stayed online for six hours before Trump deleted it, and his press secretary insisted that he and a small group of people knew exactly what he meant.

The Winklevoss twins, who sued Mark Zuckerberg in 2004, went to the 2008 Olympics in which sport?

Rowing took Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss to the men's pair in Beijing, where they placed sixth; Cameron later rowed for Oxford in the Boat Race.

Posts tagged #TBT share nostalgic old photos on which day of the week?

Thursday is the day for Throwback Thursday; one origin story credits the sneaker blog Nice Kicks, which posted old basketball shoes each week from 2006.

Which footballer's YouTube channel hit a million subscribers 90 minutes after its 2024 launch?

Cristiano Ronaldo called the channel UR Cristiano, and no channel had ever reached a million subscribers so quickly.

Which Swedish gamer, born Felix Kjellberg, held YouTube's most-subscribed channel from 2013 to 2019?

PewDiePie was finally overtaken after a months-long public race with the record label T-Series that ran from late 2018 into 2019.

Which 2020 Netflix docudrama had former tech insiders warn about the apps they helped to build?

The Social Dilemma premiered at Sundance in January 2020 and features Tristan Harris, a former design ethicist who co-founded the Center for Humane Technology.

A Texas mom's 2016 Facebook Live video showed her laughing in a mask of which Star Wars character?

Chewbacca masks sold out at online retailers within days of Candace Payne's video, which went on to pass 140 million views; the store that sold hers sent her gift cards and Star Wars toys.

Which company paid $970 million in 2014 for Twitch, a live-streaming site spun off from Justin.tv?

Amazon bought it in an all-cash deal; Twitch had started in 2011 as the gaming offshoot of Justin.tv, a 2007 site that began with Justin Kan broadcasting his own life around the clock.

Which pop star became the first person to reach 100 million Twitter followers, in June 2017?

Katy Perry had become Twitter's most-followed person back in November 2013, and Guinness recognised her follower count as a record.

Hackers who seized 130 major Twitter accounts in 2020 asked followers to send which cryptocurrency?

Bitcoin worth about $110,000 arrived before the tweets were removed; the scam promised to double any payment and used accounts including Barack Obama's and Apple's.

Which executive, Facebook's chief operating officer from 2008 to 2022, wrote the bestseller Lean In?

Sheryl Sandberg was hired without a formal search, after Zuckerberg decided she was "a perfect fit", and Lean In sold more than a million copies within months.

Which Napster co-founder joined Facebook as its first president when it was five months old?

Sean Parker brought in Peter Thiel as Facebook's first investor and negotiated the board seats that left Zuckerberg in control of the company.

Which Tencent app, called Weixin inside China, combines messaging, social media and mobile payments?

WeChat was first released in 2011 and passed a billion monthly users in 2018; its range of functions has earned it the nickname China's "app for everything".

Which messaging app did Pavel and Nikolai Durov launch in 2013, having earlier founded Russia's VK?

Telegram runs on a protocol written by Nikolai Durov, with Pavel providing the money; the brothers left VK in 2014, saying it had been taken over by the government.

Which Reddit forum of amateur traders drove the GameStop short squeeze of early 2021?

The r/wallstreetbets forum was founded in 2012 by Jaime Rogozinski, and its GameStop bet caused significant losses for several US hedge funds and short sellers.

Which YouTube Creator Award, introduced in 2015, goes to channels with 10 million subscribers?

Diamond awards are silver-plated metal set with a large piece of crystal shaped like a play button, and the tier arrived at VidCon 2015 after Gold and Silver.

YouTube's founders activated the site's web address on which holiday in 2005?

Valentine's Day 2005 was when the youtube.com address was activated; the site began as a video dating service with the slogan "Tune In, Hook Up", an idea the founders dropped when it failed.

Which Senegal-born creator became TikTok's most-followed in 2022 by silently mocking life hacks?

Khaby Lame started posting after being laid off in March 2020 from his job as a machine operator at a factory near Turin.

Which reaction did Facebook add beside Love, Haha, Wow, Sad and Angry during the 2020 pandemic?

Care joined the five reactions that Facebook had rolled out worldwide in February 2016, after years of users asking for a "Dislike" button.

Facebook's signature blue is explained by which trait of its founder, Mark Zuckerberg?

Color blindness to red and green, which Zuckerberg discovered through a test taken around 2007, is why the site's primary color is blue.

Which 2007 home video of two English brothers was sold as an NFT for over $700,000 in 2021?

Charlie Bit My Finger, barely a minute long, was YouTube's most-viewed video for about six months from October 2009, until Lady Gaga's Bad Romance passed it.

What did Twitter call the 24-hour disappearing posts it launched in late 2020 and scrapped in 2021?

Fleets were meant to coax quieter users into posting, but Twitter found they were mostly used by people who were already active.

'Metaverse', the word behind Facebook's 2021 renaming, was coined in which Neal Stephenson novel?

Snow Crash, published in 1992, imagined the Metaverse as a virtual-reality successor to the internet populated by user-controlled avatars.

Shou Zi Chew, questioned by the US Congress as TikTok's boss in 2023, was born in which country?

Singapore is where Shou Zi Chew was born and did his national service in the armed forces; he became TikTok's chief executive in 2021.

Which actress's October 2017 tweet turned Tarana Burke's phrase 'Me Too' into a worldwide hashtag?

Alyssa Milano said the idea came from a friend; Tarana Burke had first used the phrase about a decade earlier, around 2006, on Myspace.

Which GIF search engine did UK regulators order Meta to sell, a ruling made in November 2021?

Giphy had cost a reported $400 million in 2020; after the forced sale, Shutterstock picked it up in 2023 for $53 million in cash.

Which pope sent the first tweet from the papal account @Pontifex in December 2012?

Benedict XVI saw the account switched to read "Sede Vacante" on the day he retired, 28 February 2013, and his tweets were archived.

What is TikTok's sister app for mainland China called, a name that translates as 'shaking sound'?

Douyin launched in September 2016 under the name A.me and was renamed three months later; TikTok is the version for the rest of the world.

Which WordPress.com operator bought Tumblr in 2019 for a price reported to be under $3 million?

Automattic reportedly paid less than 0.3% of what Tumblr had sold for six years earlier, and its chief executive, Matt Mullenweg, ran it alongside WordPress.com.

Which name for the # symbol was coined by Bell Labs workers in the 1960s, long before hashtags?

Octothorpe was dreamed up when Bell Labs wanted to add an eleventh and a twelfth key to the telephone keypad and needed names for the new symbols.

What does Reddit's 'AMA' stand for, the format Barack Obama used in a site-crashing 2012 session?

Ask Me Anything threads live on the forum r/IAmA, whose name is short for "I am a ___, Ask Me Anything"; other guests have included Bill Gates and Bernie Sanders.