Lifestyle/Social Media and the Internet

Social Media

Blogs

The term "weblog" was coined by Jorn Barger in 1997. “Blog” is a shortened form of weblog. The modern blog evolved from the online diary.

A vlog, also known as a video blog or video log, is a form of blog for which the medium is video.

The collective community of all blogs and blog authors, particularly notable and widely read blogs, is known as the blogosphere.

Blogger is an American online content management system founded in 1999 which enables its users to write blog with time-stamped entries. It was acquired by Google in 2003.

HuffPost (The Huffington Post until 2017; often abbreviated as HuffPo) is an online news aggregator and blog. Founded by Ariana Huffington in 2005.

Boing Boing is a website that covers topics such as technology, science fiction, gadgets, and politics. It was one the most popular blogs in the world until 2006, when Chinese-language blogs became popular.

Jezebel is a blog aimed at women's interests, under the tagline ‘Celebrity, Sex, Fashion. Without Airbrushing’. It is one of several blogs owned by Gawker Media.

Business networks

LinkedIn is a business-oriented social network used primarily for professional networking. It was founded by Reid Hoffman and Eric Ly in 2003. Microsoft acquired the company for $26 billion in 2016. As of September 2021, LinkedIn has 774 million registered members from over 200 countries and territories.

XING is a Hamburg-based career-oriented social networking site and a competitor to LinkedIn.

Collaborative projects

A wiki is an online hypertext publication collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience, using a web browser. The first wiki software, WikiWikiWeb, was developed by Ward Cunningham.

Wikipedia began as a complementary project for Nupedia, a free online English-language encyclopaedia project. It was founded in 2001, under the ownership of Bomis, a web portal company. Its main figures were Bomis CEO Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, editor-in-chief for Nupedia and later Wikipedia. it is hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, an American non-profit organization.

Wikipedia's combined editions comprise more than 61 million articles, attracting around 2 billion unique device visits per month and more than 15 million edits per month. There are currently 334 language editions of Wikipedia.

The operation of Wikipedia depends on MediaWiki, a custom-made, free and open-source wiki software platform written in PHP and built upon the MySQL database system.

Forums

An imageboard is a type of Internet forum which operates mostly via posting images. Based on a textboard.

4chan is an anonymous English-language imageboard website. Launched by Christopher Poole in 2003. 4chan was created as an unofficial English-language counterpart to the Japanese imageboard Futaba Channel, also known as 2chan, and its first boards were created for posting images and discussion related to anime.

8chan was created by Frederick Brennan in 2013. unlike 4chan, 8chan lets its users decide what they want to discuss by allowing any user to create their own board dedicated to any topic, a concept first made popular by news bulletin boards like Reddit. 8chan also claims to have a strong dedication to freedom of speech and allows all content, and has been linked to white supremacism, neo-Nazism, the alt-right, racism and antisemitism.

Craigslist is a centralized network of online communities, featuring free classified advertisements. The service was founded in 1995 by Craig Newmark for the San Francisco Bay Area.

Mumsnet is a community website set up by mothers to give advice on parenting and family issues. It was created in 2000 by Justine Roberts. in November 2009, Prime Minister Gordon Brown, opposition leader David Cameron and other leading UK government ministers took part in live webchats with Mumsnet users.

Microblogs

Microblogging is the practice of posting small pieces of digital content – which could be text, pictures, links, short videos, or other media – on the internet. The first micro-blogs were known as tumblelogs.

Twitter was created in 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, Biz Stone and Noah Glass. Dorsey became Twitter’s CEO.

Dorsey published the first Twitter message on 21 March 2006: "just setting up my twttr".

The tweets were set to a 140-character limit for compatibility with SMS messaging. In 2017, Twitter doubled its historical 140-character-limitation to 280.

The Twitter logo is a blue bird named "Larry the Bird" after Larry Bird of the NBA's Boston Celtics fame.

Twitter introduced the "blue tick" verification badge in 2009. In October 2022, it was reported that verification would instead be included in the paid Twitter Blue service, and that existing verified accounts would lose their status if they do not subscribe. In December 2022, the "Official" text was replaced by a gold checkmark for organizations, as well as a grey checkmark for government and multilateral accounts.

During an outage, Twitter users were at one time shown the "fail whale" error message illustrating eight orange birds using a net to hoist a whale from the ocean captioned "Too many tweets! Please wait a moment and try again".

In 2019, Twitter had more than 330 million monthly active users.

Ashton Kutcher was the first person to get one million followers on Twitter.

A selfie orchestrated by 86th Academy Awards host Ellen DeGeneres in 2014 was at the time the most retweeted image ever. DeGeneres said she wanted to pay homage to Meryl Streep's record 17 Oscar nominations by setting a new record with her, and invited other Oscar celebrities to join them. The resulting photo of twelve celebrities broke the previous retweet record within forty minutes.

The fastest pace to a million followers was set by Caitlyn Jenner, who joined the site on 1 June 2015, and amassed a million followers in just 4 hours and 3 minutes.

In October 2022, Elon Musk acquired Twitter for US$44 billion. Linda Yaccarino succeeded Musk as CEO in June 2023.

X Corp. was established by Elon Musk in 2023 as the successor to Twitter, Inc. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of X Holdings Corp., which is itself owned by Musk. The company owns Twitter (currently rebranding to X). The Twitter bird logo is being phased out.

Most-followed Twitter accounts (August 2023)

Rank	Person	Account name	Followers (millions)
1	Elon Musk	@elonmusk	149
2	Barack Obama	@BarackObama	132
3	Justin Bieber	@justinbieber	111
4	Cristiano Ronaldo	@Cristiano	109
5	Rihanna	@rihanna	108
6	Katy Perry	@KatyPerry	107
7	Taylor Swift	@TaylorSwift13	93
8	Narendra Modi	@narendramodi	90
9	Donald Trump	@realDonaldTrump	86
10	Lady Gaga	@ladygaga	84

Sina Weibo was launched in China in 2009 and has over 580 million monthly active users. "Weibo" is the Chinese word for "microblog". Many of Sina Weibo's features resemble those of Twitter.

Vine was an American short-form video hosting service where users could share six-second-long looping video clips. It was originally launched in 2013, by Vine Labs. Bought by Twitter in 2012 before its launch, the service was shut down in 2017.

Tumblr was founded by David Karp in 2007. The service allows users to post multimedia and other content to a short-form blog. Users can follow other users' blogs. Tumblr was acquired by Yahoo! in 2013, then sold to Automattic in 2019. Usage of Tumblr has declined since Yahoo! progressively restricted adult content on the site.

Parler is an American microblogging service known for hosting right-wing content. Its users include those banned from mainstream social networks.

Truth Social is an alt-tech social media platform created by Trump Media & Technology Group. It has been called a Twitter clone. Users are able to make posts ("Truths", similar to tweets) and share other users' posts ("ReTruths", similar to retweets).

Photo sharing

Instagram was created by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger and launched for iOS in 2010. Instagram is a portmanteau of "instant camera" and "telegram". The first Instagram post was a photo of South Beach Harbor at Pier 38 in San Francisco, posted by Mike Krieger in July 2010.

Instagram allows users to upload media that can be edited with filters, be organised by hashtags, and be associated with a location. 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.

Instagram Direct – a feature that lets users interact through private messaging.

Instagram Stories – a feature that allows users to take photos, add effects and layers, and add them to their Instagram story.

Instagram Reels – are short-form Instagram videos that can be up to 90 seconds long. Users can record, edit, and clip videos and photos together, set them to music, and post to their feed.

Instagram released a version of its app for Android phones in April 2012, the same month that Facebook acquired the service for approximately US$1 billion in cash and stock.

The most-liked Instagram post is a photograph of Lionel Messi and the Argentina national football team after winning the 2022 FIFA World Cup. Nine of the top 10 posts are photos of Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi. The second most-liked post is a photo of an egg created with the specific purpose of surpassing the then most-liked Instagram post, a picture of Kylie Jenner's daughter. The photo was posted by the account @world_record_egg.

Instagram is the biggest platform for 67% of the top 50 social media influencers.

Most-followed Instagram accounts (August 2023)

Rank	Person	Account name	Followers (millions)
1	Instagram	@instagram	650
2	Cristiano Ronaldo	@cristiano	600
3	Lionel Messi	@leomessi	484
4	Selena Gomez	@selenagomez	427
5	Kylie Jenner	@kyliejenner	398
6	Dwayne Johnson	@therock	388
7	Ariana Grande	@arianagrande	378
8	Kim Kardashian	@kimkardashian	363
9	Beyonce	@beyonce	315
10	Khloe Kardashian	@khloekardashian	311

Snapchat is a photo messaging application developed by Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy, and Reggie Brown, then Stanford University students. Using the application, users can take photos, record videos, add text and drawings, and send them to a controlled list of recipients.

Snapchat is primarily used for creating multimedia messages referred to as "snaps"; snaps can consist of a photo or a short video, and can be edited to include filters and effects, text captions, and drawings. Snaps can be directed privately to selected contacts, or to a semi-public "Story" or a public "Story" called "Our Story".

The Snapshot mascot, Ghostface Chillah, is named after Ghostface Killah of the hip-hop group Wu-Tang Clan.

The company was rebranded Snap Inc. in 2016, in order to include the Spectacles product under the company name.

In July 2021, Snapchat had 293 million daily active users.

Flickr was launched in 2004 by Ludicorp, a Vancouver-based company founded by Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake. Yahoo! acquired Ludicorp and Flickr in 2005. The company is currently owned by SmugMug.

Flickr is an online service for uploading, sharing, and editing photos and videos. It is a popular way for amateur and professional photographers to host high-resolution photos.

Flickr has always offered two types of accounts: free and paid. The free option is limited to 1,000 photos or videos stored, with videos limited to 3 minutes.

Photobucket is an image hosting, video hosting, slideshow creation and photo sharing website. It was founded in 2003 by Alex Welch and Darren Crystal. Photobucket hosts more than 10 billion images from 100 million registered members.

Pinterest was founded by Ben Silbermann in 2009. Pinterest is an online service for finding and saving ideas for different topics, such as recipes, interior design, fashion, and more. Users can follow other users and see what they are pinning.

Social network sites

Myspace was founded by Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe in 2003. It was the first social network to reach a global audience and from 2005 to 2009 was the largest social networking site in the world. In 2005 Myspace was acquired by News Corporation. After Facebook surpassed Myspace in its number of unique visitors, the number of Myspace users declined steadily despite several redesigns.

Bebo (“Blog Early, Blog Often”) was an American website that originally operated from 2005 until its bankruptcy in 2013. It was founded in California by husband-and-wife team Michael and Xochi Birch. at the height of its popularity, Bebo overtook Myspace to become the most widely used social networking website in the UK. Bebo was bought by AOL in 2008, but was sold again in 2010 due to large numbers of users moving to Facebook.

For information on the Facebook company see Civilisation/Technology

Facebook is built in PHP. Each registered user on Facebook has a personal profile that shows their posts and content.

Introduced in 2006, Feed, formerly known as the News Feed, is the primary system through which users are exposed to content posted on the network. Feed highlights information that includes profile changes, upcoming events, and birthdays, among other updates.

The “like” button was introduced in 2009 and was extended to comments in 2010. In 2016, Facebook expanded Like into "Reactions", choosing among five pre-defined emotions, including "Love", "Haha", "Wow", "Sad", or "Angry". In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, a new "Care" reaction was added.

Facebook Messenger is an instant messaging service that began as Facebook Chat in 2008.

In 2011, Facebook announced its Bug Bounty Program that paid security researchers a minimum of $500 for reporting security holes.

Threads is a new social media app (launched in July 2023), operated by Meta Platforms, for sharing text updates and joining public conversations. It requires users to have an Instagram account and posts can be up to 500 characters long and include links, photos, and videos up to 5 minutes in length. Threads is designed as a platform for real-time conversations and sharing, similar to Twitter.

WhatsApp was founded in 2009 by Brian Acton and Jan Koum, former employees of Yahoo!.

WhatsApp is a free app that lets you send messages, make calls, and share media with other users. It uses end-to-end encryption to keep your communication private and secure. The client application runs on mobile devices, and can be accessed from computers.

WhatsApp was acquired by Facebook (now Meta Platforms) in 2014 for US$19.3 billion. At the time, it was the largest acquisition of a venture-capital-backed company in history.

By February 2020 WhatsApp had more than 2 billion users worldwide.

Reddit was founded by University of Virginia roommates Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian, with Aaron Swartz, in 2005. As of August 2021, Reddit is valued at more than $10 billion.

Reddit is a social news aggregation, content rating, and discussion website. Posts are organized by subject into user-created boards called "communities" or "subreddits". Registered users are referred to as "redditors".

Reddit's logo is a time-traveling alien named Snoo.

WeChat is a Chinese instant messaging, social media, and mobile payment app developed by Tencent. First released in 2011, it became the world's largest standalone mobile app in 2018 with over 1 billion monthly active users. WeChat operates from China under Chinese law, which includes strong censorship provisions and interception protocols.

Telegram is an instant messaging service founded in 2013 by the brothers Nikolai and Pavel Durov, the founders of VK, Russia's largest social network.

Video sharing

YouTube was created in 2005 by three former PayPal employees – Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim. The company was bought by Google for $1.65 billion in 2006. It is the second most visited website, after Google Search. YouTube has more than 2.5 billion monthly users.

YouTube Premium is a subscription service. It was formerly known as Music Key and YouTube Red.

YouTube Shorts hosts content much like YouTube's primary service but with a focus on videos at a maximum length of 60 seconds.

The Billion-View Club denotes videos which had succeeded in reaching over 1 billion views since their initial upload.

Susan Wojcicki was CEO from 2014 to 2023. The current CEO is Neal Mohan.

The first YouTube video was entitled Me at the zoo, and shows Jawed Karim at the San Diego Zoo. The video was uploaded on 23 April 2005.

Charlie Bit My Finger is a 2007 internet viral video famous for being at the time the most viewed YouTube video. The video features Harry Davies-Carr (aged 3) and Charlie Davies-Carr (aged 1).

Evolution of Dance is a 2003 video featuring Judson Laipply performing dance moves to popular songs.

Masha and the Bear is a Russian comedy computer-animated series and is the most watched preschool series in the world. Masha is a four-year-old girl and her friend the bear keeps her safe.

Ryan's World (formerly Ryan ToysReview) is a YouTube channel for children aged 2-6 featuring Ryan Kaji. The videos feature toy reviews, and in 2020 Ryan was the highest-paid YouTuber.

Zoe Sugg, also known as Zoella, began her career as a YouTuber in 2009 and has since amassed over 10 million subscribers. In 2014, Sugg launched her Zoella Beauty range of cosmetics. Her debut novel, Girl Online, was published in 2014 and broke the record for highest first-week sales of a first-time novelist.

Epic Rap Battles of History is a YouTube web series and music project created by Peter "Nice Peter" Shukoff and Lloyd "EpicLLOYD" Ahlquist. The series pits historical and pop culture figures against one another in a rap battle format.

In 2012, Gangnam Style became the first video to reach one billion views.

In 2018, Despacito became the first video to reach five billion views.

In 2022, Baby Shark Dance became the first video to reach ten billion views.

In 2018, November Rain by Guns N’ Roses became the first video created prior to YouTube to surpass one billion views.

Most-viewed YouTube videos (August 2023)

Rank	Name	Views (billions)	Information
1	Baby Shark Dance	13.2	Music video of a children’s song created by Pinkfong, a South Korean entertainment company
2	Despacito	8.2	Song by Puerto Rican singer Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee featuring Justin Bieber
3	Johny Johny Yes Papa	6.8	Nursery rhyme uploaded to YouTube by Loo Loo Kids in 2016
4	Bath Song	6.3	Nursery rhyme on American YouTube channel Cocomelon
5	Shape of You	6.1	Song by Ed Sheeran
6	See You Again	6.0	Song by Wiz Khalifa
7	Wheels on the Bus	5.5	Folk song on Cocomelon
8	Phonics Song with Two Words	5.4	Children’s song on Indian YouTube channel ChuChu TV
9	Uptown Funk	5.0	Song by Mark Ronson featuring Bruno Mars
10	Learning Colours – Colourful Eggs on a Farm	4.9	Children’s song on Russian YouTube channel Miroshka TV

Most-subscribed YouTube channels (August 2023)

Rank	Name	Subscribers (millions)	Information
1	T-Series	247	Indian music record label and film production company
2	MrBeast	176	Jimmy Donaldson, an American YouTuber. His YouTube videos centre on expensive stunts and challenges
3	Cocomelon	164	American channel that specialises in 3D animation videos of both traditional nursery rhymes and their own original children's songs
4	Sony Entertainment Television (SET) India	161	Indian Hindi-language general entertainment YouTube channel
5	Kids Diana Show	133	Eva Diana Kidisyuk is a Ukrainian-American YouTuber. Roleplay-oriented children's content
6	PewDiePie	111	Felix Kjellberg is a Swedish YouTuber. His YouTube channel posted “Let's Play” videos of horror and action video games, and became the most subscribed on YouTube in 2013
7	Like Nastya	106	Anastasia Radzinskaya (age 9) is a Russian-American YouTuber. Her content includes children's songs and educational entertainment
8	Vlad and Niki	100	Russian American-born brothers Vladislav Vashketov (age 8) and Nikita Vashketov (age 5) from Miami
9	Zee Music Company	98	Indian music company with a large Bollywood catalogue
10	WWE	97	World Wrestling Entertainment, an American professional wrestling promotion

TikTok hosts user-submitted videos, which can range in duration from 3 seconds to 10 minutes. It is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese internet technology company headquartered in Beijing founded by Zhang Yiming in 2012. The mainland Chinese counterpart is Douyin.

In September 2021, TikTok reported that it had reached 1 billion users.

41% of TikTok users are from Generation Z.

The "For You" page on TikTok is a feed of videos that are recommended to users based on their activity on the app.

In July 2023, TikTok launched a new streaming service called TikTok Music, currently available only in Brazil and Indonesia.

Most-followed TikTok accounts (August 2023)

Rank	Username	Followers (millions)	Likes (billions)	Information
1	@khaby.lame	162	2	Khabane Lame was born in Senegal, but now lives in Italy. On his account he posts funny videos where he points out how some people over-complicate things for no reason
2	@charlidamelio	151	11	Charli d’Amelio was the first person to hit 100 million followers on the site. She has earned massive popularity for her dances with both viral routines and original choreography, montages, and lip-syncs
3	@bellapoarch	93	2	Bella Poarch is a Philippine-born American social media personality. She went viral lip-syncing to the song “M to the B” by Millie B that has over 400 million views and is the most liked video on TikTok
4	@addisonrae	88	6	Addison Rae Easterling rose to prominence by performing dances and lip-sync trends. She was named the highest earning TikToker in 2021 by Forbes Magazine
5	@mrbeast	86	0.9	See “Most-subscribed YouTube channels” above
6	@zachking	78	1	Zach King  is most known for his "magic vines," which are six-second videos digitally edited to look as if he is doing magic
7	@kimberly.loiaza	76	5	Kimberly Loiaza  is a Mexican internet personality and singer
8	@tiktok	74	0.3	Social media platform
9	@willsmith	73	0.5	American actor and rapper
10	@cznburak	73	1	Burak Ozdemir is a Turkish chef and restaurateur. He owns the “Hatay Civilizations Table” chain of restaurants

Vimeo is based in New York City. In contrast with other video-sharing sites, Vimeo does not use any advertising either on its pages or embedded in videos. Instead, Vimeo sells its services and products to content creators for revenue as a software as a service (SaaS) model.

Virtual worlds

Linden Lab was founded by Philip Rosedale in 1999. Second Life, an online multimedia platform that allows people to create an avatar for themselves and then interact with other users and user-created content within a multiplayer online virtual world, was launched in 2003. It is not a traditional game, but a platform that allows users to create and explore user-generated content.

The in-game currency, "Linden Dollars" (L$), can be officially exchanged for real money. Anshe Chung is the avatar of Ailin Graef, a Chinese businesswoman who became the first virtual world millionaire.

Internet

Podcasts

A podcast is essentially a talk radio series on demand. Podcasts tend to be focused on a theme or topic.

In 2005, Apple released iTunes 4.9, which added formal support for podcasts.

Popular podcasts

Serial is an investigative journalism podcast hosted by Sarah Koenig, narrating a nonfiction story over multiple episodes.

The Joe Rogan Experience is hosted by American comedian, presenter, and UFC commentator Joe Rogan. It was launched in 2009 on YouTube by Rogan and comedian Brian Redban.

The Daily is a daily news podcast produced by The New York Times, hosted by Michael Barbaro and Sabrina Tavernise. Launched in 2017.

This American Life is a weekly hour-long radio program produced in collaboration with Chicago Public Media and hosted by Ira Glass. It is primarily a journalistic non-fiction program.

Stuff You Should Know is a podcast and video series published by iHeartRadio and hosted by Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant. The podcast, which releases episodes several times a week, educates listeners on a wide variety of topics, often using popular culture as a reference. Since debuting in 2008, the podcast is consistently ranked in the Top 10 on iTunes and is one of the most popular podcasts in the world.

Call Her Daddy is a sex advice and comedy podcast created by Sofia Franklyn and Alexandra Cooper.

My Dad Wrote a Porno was a British comedy podcast hosted by Jamie Morton, James Cooper, and Alice Levine. Published from 2015 to 2022. Each episode featured Morton reading a new chapter of ‘Belinda Blinked’, an amateur erotic novel series written by his father under the pen name Rocky Flintstone.

The Rest is Politics is hosted by Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart and was launched in 2022.

The Rest is History is hosted by historian and author Dominic Sandbrook and popular historian Tom Holland and is produced by Goalhanger Podcasts. Goalhanger is owned by former England footballer Gary Lineker, and also produces The Rest is Politics and The Rest is Football.

Off Menu with Ed Gamble and James Acaster is a food and comedy podcast. In the show, guests are asked by Acaster for their dream menu, in a dream restaurant.

The Diary of a CEO with Steven Barlett is Europe's most downloaded business podcast. Bartlett was the co-founder and co-CEO of Social Chain, and is now an investor on the BBC One show Dragons' Den.

Memes

A meme is an amusing or interesting item or genre of items that is spread widely online especially through social media. In his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins defended his newly coined word meme, which he defined as "a unit of cultural transmission".

Grumpy Cat – is the nickname given to Tardar Sauce, a cat that rose to online fame after several pictures of her annoyed facial expressions were posted to Reddit 2012.

Nyan Cat – is a viral video which became an Internet meme. It is an animation depicting a cat with the body of a cherry Pop-Tart flying through outer space.

LOLcats – consist of humorous photos of cats with superimposed text written in a form of broken English known as lolspeak.

I Can Has Cheezburger? – is a weblog featuring LOLcats. It was created in 2007 by Eric Nakagawa.

Doge – consists of a picture of Kabosu, a Shiba Inu dog, accompanied by multicoloured text in Comic Sans font in the foreground. The Doge cryptocurrency is based on the meme.

Pepe the Frog – originated in a comic by Matt Furie called Boy's Club. The character's image was appropriated as a symbol of the controversial alt-right movement.

Rickrolling – is a prank that involves posting a hyperlink that is supposedly relevant to the topic at hand in an online discussion, but re-directs the viewer to the music video of Never Gonna Give You Up by Rick Astley.

Salt Bae – is a Turkish chef who became a meme after a series of viral internet videos that show his peculiar way of sprinkling salt: dropping it from his fingertips to his forearm, and then onto the meat.

How Dare You? – refers to a memorable quote from Greta Thunberg in which she gives a speech at the United Nations Climate Action Summit in 2019.

Sad Keanu – is based on a paparazzi photograph of Keanu Reeves sitting on a park bench and eating a sandwich by himself.

Disaster Girl – is a photoshop meme in which a photo of a smiling girl (four-year-old Zoe Roth) is superimposed on to images of natural disasters and accidents to imply that she has caused some type of calamity depicted in the background.

Tide Pod Challenge – involved a dare to intentionally consume Tide Pods, a laundry detergent pod sold by Procter & Gamble.

Ice Bucket Challenge – involved the pouring of a bucket of ice water over a person's head, to promote awareness of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, also known as motor neuron disease or Lou Gehrig's disease) and encourage donations to research. The challenge went viral in 2014.

Rule 63 – states that, as a rule, "for every given male character, there is a female version of that character" and vice versa. It is one of the "Rules of the Internet" that began in 2006 as a Netiquette guide on 4chan.

“Y U No” Guy – is a stick-figure character whose facial expression is full of frustration and rage. The memes are a way to bring someone's attention on a particular subject or issue.

Success Kid – features a baby named Sammy Griner who is clenching a fistful of sand with a determined facial expression.

One Does Not Simply – is based on a quote from the “Lord of the Rings” film where Boromir (played by Sean Bean) says "One does not simply walk into Mordor".

Bad Luck Brian – is American Internet celebrity Kyle Craven, known for a photo posted on Reddit in 2012. His captions describe a variety of unlucky, embarrassing, and tragic events.

Webcomics

Among the earliest online comics were Eric Millikin’s Witches and Stitches, which was published on CompuServe in 1985, and T.H.E. Fox, which was published on CompuServe and Quantum Link in 1986.

Art Comics Daily is a pioneering webcomic first published in 1995 by Bebe Williams. The webcomic was published on the Internet rather than in print in order to reserve some artistic freedom.

Modern Tales was a webcomics publisher active from 2002 to 2012, best known for being one of the first profitable subscription models for digital content.

Zuda Comics is the DC Comics web comic imprint, launched in 2007.

Ctrl+Alt+Del is a gaming-related webcomic and animated series written by Tim Buckley, launched in 2002.

Questionable Content (QC) is a webcomic written and illustrated by Jeph Jacques, launched in 2003. The plot centres on indie rock fan Marten Reed.

xkcd is a webcomic created by Randall Munroe, a former contractor for NASA. Munroe describes it as ‘a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language’. The subject matter of the comic varies from statements on life and love to mathematical, programming, and scientific in-jokes.

Penny Arcade is a webcomic focused on video games and video game culture, written by Jerry Holkins and illustrated by Mike Krahulik. The strip features Krahulik and Holkins' cartoon alter egos, John "Gabe" Gabriel and Tycho Brahe and debuted in 1998.

Sarah's Scribbles is a webcomic by Sarah Andersen that follows Andersen's experiences as a millennial and focuses on themes such as adulthood and maturity.

Achewood was created by Chris Onstad and portrays the lives of a group of oddball anthropomorphic stuffed toys, robots, and pets, like depressive cat Roast Beef and innocent otter Phillipe.

Webtoons are a type of digital comic that originated in South Korea that are usually meant to be read on smartphones. Tapas, originally known as Comic Panda, is a webtoon that hosts English-language works.

Online dating

Match.com was one of the first online dating sites. It was founded by Gary Kreman in San Francisco in 1995. Match Group, which owns and operates several online dating web sites including OkCupid, Tinder, PlentyOfFish, and Match.com, went public in 2015.

Gaydar was founded in 1999 in Cape Town, by London-based South Africans Gary Frisch and his partner Henry Badenhorst. It was created as a tool to connect gay and bisexual men all over the world.

eHarmony was created in 2000 in Los Angeles by clinical psychologist Neil Clark Warren. When it began, eHarmony did not offer same-sex matches; however, from 2009 through 2019 the company provided service through a separate platform, Compatible Partners. The site is based upon pre-screening using personality tests.

Ashley Madison is a Canadian online dating service aimed at married people who want to have an affair. The website's slogan is "Life is short. Have an affair." In 2019 the company announced that it had 60 million members.

Badoo is the world’s largest dating app. It was founded by the Russian entrepreneur Andrey Andreev and launched in Moscow in 2006.

Grindr was one of the first geosocial apps for gay men when it was launched by Joel Simkhai in 2009 and has since become the largest and most popular gay mobile app in the world. The app allows users to create a personal profile and use their GPS position to browse other profiles sorted by distance.

Tinder was founded by Sean Rad in 2012. In Tinder, users "swipe right" to like or "swipe left" to dislike other users' profiles, and uses a "double opt-in" system where both users must like each other before they can exchange messages. By 2014 the company was recording one billion "swipes" a day.

Bumble was launched by Whitney Wolfe Herd in 2014. In heterosexual matches, only female users can make the first contact with matched male users, while in homosexual matches either person can send a message first.

happn is a French location-based social search mobile and web application.

Web browsers

WorldWideWeb was the first web browser and web page editor. It was created by Tim Berners-Lee in 1990.

Mosaic, released in 1993, was one of the first browsers to be widely available. It was instrumental in popularizing the World Wide Web and was the first graphical web browser. Mosaic was developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA).

Netscape Navigator was the dominant web browser in terms of usage share in the 1990s. Marc Andreessen, the leader of the Mosaic team, started his own company, Netscape, which released the Mosaic-influenced Netscape Navigator in 1994.

Internet Explorer was released by Microsoft in 1995, leading to a browser war with Netscape. Microsoft gained a dominant position as it bundled Internet Explorer with Microsoft Windows and did so as freeware with no restrictions on usage. The market share of Internet Explorer peaked at over 95% in the early 2000s.

Firefox is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation. It was released in 2004. The animal shown in the company logo is a stylized fox, although "firefox" is usually a common name for the red panda.

Safari is a web browser developed by Apple and released in 2003. It is built into Apple's operating systems, including macOS, iOS, and iPadOS. Safari 3 was ported to the newly-introduced iPhone within iPhone OS (later called iOS) in 2007. The original Safari logo is a 3D image of a compass with a silver frame and sky-blue dial.

Google Chrome is a cross-platform web browser and was first released in 2008 for Microsoft Windows. Most of Chrome's source code comes from Google's free and open-source software project Chromium, but Chrome is licensed as proprietary freeware. Chrome is the dominant browser on personal computers, tablets, and smartphones.

When a user attempts to navigate to a web page on Google Chrome while being offline, the browser notifies the user that they are not connected to the Internet, with an illustration of a pixelated Tyrannosaurus rex shown on the page. The user can then play the Dinosaur Game, guiding the T-Rex across a desert landscape.

Opera is a Chromium-based browser initially released in 1995. In 2016, Opera was acquired by an investment group led by a Chinese consortium.

Microsoft Edge is a web browser developed by Microsoft and included in the company's Windows operating system. It replaced Internet Explorer as the default browser on Windows 10. It is also the default browser in Windows 10 for smartphones and small tablets. Internet Explorer 11 remained available alongside Edge on Windows 10 for compatibility until 2023, when it was removed.

UC Browser is a web browser developed by the Singapore/China-based mobile Internet company UCWeb, which is in turn owned by the Alibaba Group.

Yandex Browser is a freeware web browser developed by the Russian technology corporation Yandex that is based on the Chromium open-source project.

Market share for desktop web browsers (April 2023)

1.    Chrome                    66%

2.    Safari                        12%

3.    Microsoft Edge        11%

4.    Firefox                         6%

Search engines

WebCrawler was the first web search engine to provide full text search. Launched in 1994.

Yahoo! Search was the first popular search engine on the Web.

AltaVista was an early web search engine established in 1995. It was once one of the most popular search engines, but it lost ground to Google and was purchased by Yahoo! in 2003.

Infoseek was the default search engine for Netscape Navigator.

Google Search was originally developed in 1996 by Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Scott Hassan. Google's rise was largely due to a patented algorithm called PageRank which helps rank web pages that match a given search string. When Google was a Stanford research project, it was nicknamed BackRub because the technology checks backlinks to determine a site's importance. Handling more than 3.5 billion searches per day, it has a 92% share of the global search engine market. It is the most-visited website in the world.

The logo on Google's webpage will sometimes change to a special version, known as a "Google Doodle". The ‘I'm Feeling Lucky’ button bypasses the search results page and goes directly to the first-ranked page for the search phrase that is entered.

Microsoft Bing was launched in 2009. Yahoo! and Microsoft finalized a deal in which Yahoo! Search would be powered by Microsoft Bing technology.

DuckDuckGo is an internet privacy company. The company name is a reference to the children's game duck, duck, goose. The Midori web browser uses DuckDuckGo as a default search engine.

Naver was the first web portal in South Korea to develop and use its own search engine.

Yandex Search is a leading search engine in Russia.

Dark web

The dark web is the World Wide Web content that exists on darknets: networks that use the Internet but require specific software or authorization to access. Through the dark web, private computer networks can communicate and conduct business anonymously without divulging identifying information, such as a user's location. Commercial darknet markets mediate transactions for illegal goods and typically use Bitcoin as payment.

Tor (The Onion Router) is free software for enabling online anonymity and censorship resistance. Tor directs Internet traffic through a free, worldwide, volunteer network consisting of more than five thousand relays to conceal a user's location or usage from anyone conducting network surveillance or traffic analysis. The Tor Browser is a web browser capable of accessing the Tor network.

Silk Road was an online black market and the first modern darknet market. It was launched in 2011 by its American founder Ross Ulbricht under the pseudonym "Dread Pirate Roberts" (taken from the book/film The Princess Bride). Silk Road operated as a hidden service on the Tor network, allowing users to buy and sell products and services between each other anonymously. All transactions were conducted with Bitcoin. The website was known for its illegal drug marketplace, among other illegal and legal product listings. In 2013, the FBI shut down Silk Road and arrested Ulbricht.