It’s common these days to hear certain individuals or groups of people complain about how social media has penetrated into day-to-day life. And while there might be some truth to that, one of the main causes to blame for that has to be the number of sites available today. As if we don’t have enough, we are definitely bound to have a few more developers build other sites as the years go on.

However, as the years have gone by so have a number of social media platforms fallen along the way. In a world where TikTok and Twitter dominate the fame, we can easily forget how we highly depended on other sites a few years ago. So what better way to pay tribute to the fallen warriors than take a look back at what those sites were and why they are no longer with us.

MySpace

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If you do not know what MySpace is, you either didn’t have devices to access it or you’re probably too young to remember it. What many tend to refer to as the father of social media ran as the most popular site in the world from 2005 to 2008.

MySpace was big enough to even surpass Google as the most visited website across the globe in 2006. Like any other site, the platform offers users personal profiles, blogs, photos, music, video and more.

Unfortunately, one college student Mark Zuckerberg seemed to have made a better version for himself which MySpace never really found an answer to. Facebook went on to overtake the site in 2008 by a country mile and declined years after that.

Later on, MySpace was purchased by Specific Media Group and popular artist Justin Timberlake with hopes of exploiting its huge influence in the music industry. That never worked as MySpace continued to fall down a steep slope of irrelevance, clinging to music as its last lifeline.

2Go

Remember when I said you might be too young to recognise some of this? Well, this might be one of them. While it was more of a messaging app, there is no doubt that it brought about what we have today with the likes of WhatsApp and Telegram and why it deserves to be on this list.

2Go was developed in 2007 by 2go Interactive Ltd in Cape Town, South Africa. The site came in with the support of up to 1500 devices at the time. This includes feature phones, Android BlackBerry OS and BlackBerry 10 smartphones.

Being an app developed and launched in Africa, a majority of its userbase was in Africa with 13 million of the total 50 million based in Nigeria. Its growth was mainly associated with its focus on feature phones, which most African mobile markets consist out of.

The platform offered so much more including one-on-one and group chat services in addition to paid-for chat room facilities. The service went on to add new features that offered users access to live sports updates with news from Supersport and News 24.

But over time, the platform’s weaknesses due to its software base made it so hard for users and developers to continue using as tech continued to advance. As it stands, there is barely anyone that uses it. According to many reports, its downfall also began as WhatsApp rose in popularity across the continent.

The platform still runs to this day but there is no telling who is still interested enough to log on.

Vine

Image courtesy The Verge

This is one of the few sites that lived shortly but undoubtedly had a glorious existence. Vine was a platform made for sharing quick, six-second looping video clips. Launched and purchased by Twitter in 2012, the site immediately blew up in usage globally. The service even rose to become the most downloaded free app in the iOS App Store in 2013.

This popularity would be greatly owed to the many creators who took advantage early enough to make really funny clips. Despite being six seconds, there was no doubt that one or two of the videos would leave one sprawling on the floor laughing. VFX artists, musicians and animators were also able to display their incredible work on the site through short clips and leave everyone wanting more.

Unfortunately, Vine’s downfall began in 2016 when Twitter announced it would disable uploads on the site. The only looped videos that would be viewed were the ones already existing. But this action was definitely bound to have people bored as there was no more new content coming in. Eventually, Vine was completely shut down.

So if you think Vine sounds familiar, that’s because one site today owes it for the idea.

Google+

While everyone was looking ravishing during the dawn of modern social media, there was no doubt that Google would want a piece of the pie. So the tech giant launched its own site in 2011 dubbed Google+ meant to give its fans a clean site similar to what Facebook offered.

But as time went on, Google+ stopped looking like a social media site and more like just another product from the firm. So like a number of its other apps, the site just existed but had no say in the market compared to its rivals. Eventually, it was shut down and it’s pretty clear that Google won’t want to make that mistake again.