title. social media sites are based around the social aspect of interacting and sharing with other people, and its unlikely that people would start using it when theres only a handful of other people. so how exactly do they start up a user base?
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A lot of big companies start for one or more reasons.
Usually there’s a need that isn’t being met. In Twitter’s case, it was “text messages, but on the web” (back in 2006, text messages still cost 0.25c AUD in Australia and you could send WAY more tweets for the same cost). Sometimes it’s because it’s an improvement on an existing idea. In Facebook’s case, it was “MySpace, but less annoying”, while Reddit’s was no doubt “a bunch of different forums, but on one site”
Sometimes people are drawn to the novelty of a site. YouTube has been around since 2005, and TikTok since 2016, but while YouTube nailed the “here’s one central spot to upload and watch videos” thing, especially with its related videos algorithm, TikTok really nailed the “here’s some short videos, just scroll down to waste an hour of your life” thing.
So basically social media sites start because people are unhappy with what’s already out there, or there’s nothing out there. Also money. Lots of money. You don’t get anywhere without funding.
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