antimu0n

Just hypothetically, I could imagine one making a vaguely coherent taxonomy of social networks and online messaging platforms based on how many degrees of textual response they are away from, say, the textual messages sent over Internet precursors such as MERIT, NPL, Akademset, and ARPANET. (Let's call those 0th generation.)

Consequently,

• E-mail proper would be 1st generation, with further adaptations upon it really just expanding its uses.
• BBSes and MUDs/MUCKs, sort of being "responses" to "But what if we could communicate textually with others online in a format more dynamic than e-mail?", would probably be 2nd generation.
• Early chat systems like Talkomatic would also be 2nd generation, as they were responses to e-mail in the form of "what if this was instantaneous?".
• IRC, being an application of the chatroom paradigm in a form that also served as an extension of BBSes, would be 3rd generation.
• Usenet? 3rd as well, due to being decentralised where BBSes weren't, and also other functional differences.
• ICQ, AIM, YIM, MSN, would all be 4th by virtue of their similar timing and that they are all basically responses to IRC.
• XMPP? Let's call that 5th, because "what if this was peer-to-peer and open-source?" is going to come up a lot in this analysis.
• Old-style forums are probably 3rd as well, being a response in the form of "what if BBS, but World Wide Web?".
• Classmates and SixDegrees (and others like those) I'd say are 4th as well, by virtue of being a "well what if we did forums But Cooler" kind of deal.
• Open Diary is also 5th, because it took the "social media" paradigm and applied it to blogging.
• LiveJournal? 6th, as it brought more modern "social network" paradigms into the "blogging, but socially" kind of model.
• MySpace is 5th as well, doing to Not As Bloggish early platforms what LiveJournal did to blogging…
• …and I would say that Facebook is 6th, given the fact that it became relevant a few years after MySpace did, and absolutely took notes from such.
• LinkedIn, being "what if Facebook was specifically for career stuff?", probably counts as 7th.
• Skype? 6th, IMO. It was historically notable for being somehow both peer-to-peer and basically centralised but also voice calls. Serious shift compared to predecessor messaging services.
• 4chan, being "what if we made 2ch English and also brought over the most annoying Something Awful users possible?", is probably 4th. "BBS that's more BBS-ish than forum-ish but it's also on the World Wide Web" is a bit of its own thing vs. forums.
• I'd call Tumblr 7th, given its position as largely being a synthesis of LiveJournal and MySpace.
• I'd say the 7th as well for Twitter (and then Weibo), given that their main Deal™ is adapting the post-Facebook social media trend to smaller devices and thus toward microblogging.
• Newgrounds, DeviantART, and the likes of such are probably 4th, taking the vague premise of a forum and making it mainly a place for posting creative works. (Working back from this, I guess Albino Blacksheep and all sorts of furry art collections where works were submitted and then manually uploaded by the administrator would be 3rd, as "just uploading creative works yourself" was also a pretty big leap.)
• YouTube, taking the above concept and applying it to "you can just fucking upload video arbitrarily and also you can monetise it", is 5th, arguably other than its streams and "shorts" features.
• We could call Justin.tv 6th, then, as its deal was "how about streaming video?". Same goes for Livestream, I think.
• Consequently, I'd call Twitch and Picarto, for example, being more specific streaming platforms, 7th.
• Instagram, being a synthesis of the "art website" paradigm with the microblogging one, plus the fun little jump of "it's only for iPhones" (well, was, for the first two years of its existence), probably counts as 8th. (Or, did.)
• WhatsApp, being a response to SMS and Skype in the form of "what if messaging for people in most of the world could be cheaper than texting, and what if we could make some money off that?", probably counts as 7th.
• …which I'd say consequently makes Snapchat 8th, as it tied the Instagram and WhatsApp sorts of models into a new innovation: making messages extremely ephemeral.
• Google+, which had the main real idea of "well we could make the general Facebook/Twitter/&c. social media model more granular in terms of who sees what" (and also being another source of information about users for Google to advertise based on), would definitely be 8th, too.
• Tinder, being "what if we made modern social networking horny?": 8th.
• Vine, as a synthesis of Twitter and Snapchat, is 9th.
• Douyin and then TikTok, basically existing at the confluence of Weibo/Twitter and Snapchat and in essence being a reiteration of Vine, is probably 9th.
• And Slack, in the way it adapted the vague model of Skype toward being A Worky Professional Messaging Service, would probably be 7th.
• I guess Hangouts gets pulled into being 8th because it was basically an XMPP-based system being grafted onto Google+. Also has certain paradigms in its use which are pretty characteristic of other "8th generation" chat systems.
• Telegram, for example, being an answer to the question of "what if WhatsApp wasn't American and also had dodgier encryption, but also had a few extra features that make it more appealing to non-Normies™?", ends up being 8th.
• And Discord, given its nature as being Slack But Not Worky and very much existing in discursive conversation with platforms like Twitch, is also 8th, I think.
• GNU Social and other early Fediverse systems count as 8th, IMO, being a direct response to post-Facebook social media, in the form of "what if this was FLOSS and also full of German grad students?".
• Mastodon, basically taking the Fediverse and adding things to it like somewhat improved ease of use and relevance, is… …still 8th. It's mostly a fresh coat of paint.
• I figure Dreamwidth, being a LiveJournal fork which has definitely taken a different direction from other descendants like Tumblr, is 7th.
• Pillowfort, being a direct response to Tumblr, would be 8th.
• Cohost, pretty explicitly arising as a response to a wide range of contemporary social networks, including Mastodon, could definitely be called 9th? Like, the fact that one of the social networks it explicitly aimed to do things differently from was the Fediverse generally is Fairly Relevant, though it seems to mostly be in response to earlier, larger platforms.
• And Bluesky, being even more a direct response to the Fediverse (basically amounting to "actually, ActivityPub's federation model sucks shit"), is probably 9th.
• Modern Instagram, basically having been pivoted to follow TikTok's strategy, is also 9th, I guess.
• Threads, being an extremely derivative fusion of Instagram login credentials and some of the bones of the Fediverse, is also 9th, probably.