any 4gotten/underr8ed social networks and websites from the 1990s and 2000s?

Question

i've been doing sum research the past couple of days, trying 2 find any past 4gotten and/or underr8ed social networks, either dead or alive w sum drastic changes, that ppl may have used back in the day (if they were lucky enough 2 grow up w this type of internet and lifestyle).

i'm just rlly curious bc i want 2 get an even bigger glimpse of what the internet and social media looked like b4 modern social platforms like facebook, instagram, snapchat, twitter, and tiktok came and sucked the life out of all of us.

if there r any websites that i, and every1 else in this group, should know abt, don't hesit8 2 leave a comment.

in the meantime, here r sum that i know of so far:

gaia online
letterboxd (came out in 2011, but i don't think it's anything like modern day social media)
the palace
imvu
livejournal (and its many, many clones)
newgrounds
webkinz
neopets
poptropica
animal jam
aol
msn
yahoo!
icq
plyric forums
flowers for the dead (an email and blogging site)
avatar high (it's like the sims, but was on the n website b4 it became teennick as we know it 2day)
bebo (the "uk equivalent" of myspace)
vampire freaks
xanga
caleida (it was like xanga and livejournal in 1)
neopets
myspace (obvi)
friendsorenemies (it was like myspace but 4 fans of fall out boy)
geocities
stickam
ustream.tv
blog.tv
justin.tv
operator11
mogulus
veodia
yahoo! live
friendster
second life
chickensmoothie
diaryland
pitas.com
prosebox
open diary
quotev
uquiz
hi5
tagged
xat
classmates.com
fotolog
picturetrail
quizilla
bzoink
formspring (it rebranded as spring.me in 2013)
metroflog
piczo
slashdot
myyearbook (it became meetme in 2012)
buzznet
nexopia (the "canadian equivalent" of myspace)
faceparty
orkut
imeem
sixdegrees.com
mindviz
myeeos
tagworld
multiply
frappr
purevolume
gurl.com (redirects 2 seventeen magazine's website as of late 2018)
expage
hot or not (it rebranded as an app called chatdate in 2012)
literally any defunct msg boards/forum websites and chatrooms

ilusm!!

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another id like to add is moshi monsters, its similar to animal jam and due to flash going away it shut down and i feel like its been forgotten :( thankfully there was a reboot and now its still available to play! :D but i dont think theres very many users, or at least active ones

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Back in '97, if one wasn't using BBSes, assorted random forum boards, newsreaders, IRC, or was an AOL subscriber, the pickings were pretty slim. From what I recall, the best multi-interest offerings for the general public were fledglings WBS, Yahoo!, GeoCities, and Angelfire. With the advent of dedicated blogging sites/platforms, a saving grace came by way of webrings. The larger, diverse, and more popular a webring was, the odds of randomly surfing to some true gems increased. Ah, good times!

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myyearbook.com fun fact, if you google the "waybackmachine" you can put URLs from old website in there and it will pull up old screen shots of websites! very nostalgic

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God, I miss myyearbook. That was the only alternative that my dad didn't know about yet. Those were good times.

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An OOOLLLD site called sailormoon.com lmaoo.

Use to go on that wayyy back in the early 2000s.

There was chatrooms and your own email address. Sadly its gone.

There was a social media site i was popular in my home country before Facebook came out, it was called hi5. It's probably gone now.

Edit: just looked up hi5...it's now a dating website! Before it was just profiles you can customize, similar to Myspace but still some limitations.

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i know a site called www.theuselessweb.com which is a site that takes you to random useless websites. this was made way back in the day and most of the sites it takes you to are from the 2000's.

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animal jam came out in 2010, so i wouldn't count it.

interesting that a lot of the things you listed are for specific interests. early internet was separate, segmented websites for different interests. current social media is large websites that house tons of interests. the purpose of all of these, except the kids ones, could probably be fulfilled by discord servers. the sad thing is that discord servers are private and invite-only. i also don't like the cliquiness that comes with formatting websites like that, less easy to post stuff you wanna when you worry about engagement. the way the tiktok algorithm is formatted, even if it's a big social media website, creates engagement more or less in the same way these older websites did.

also interesting that a lot of the things you posted are for kids. there was a huge "kids boom" throughout the decade, where children's entertainment like disney channel and nickelodeon exploded in popularity. there's a lot of similar kids social media nowadays, too, like gacha life.

one of these "kids sites" that i remember is quizilla. it was an online quiz website where you could also post polls and stories. lots of stories where the creator got an image of a random emo boy from google and wrote fanfiction about what it'd be like for the quiz taker to be stuck in a closet with him because people at the party you were both attending decided to play seven minutes in heaven.

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Oh wow I miss avatar high and MSN message boards.

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any 4gotten/underr8ed social networks and websites from the 1990s and 2000s?

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