Does posting on BBS count as 'social media'? Asking for a friend.

IRC.. Does that count?

Does Neopets count? I think I made my first account there in either late 2002 or early 2003.

First social media account I signed up up for was msn to talk to a girl I liked. Msn is long gone, but that girl is now my wife

Slashdot and Segfault.

At the time, all my online friends used it to discuss techie things.

First social network with real people in my local area? Whirlpool.net.au

It started as a site for peer support for one ISP but became a forum for local and regional technological issues.

There were also other niche forums for niche interests, including a Nissan Pulsar forum; we would organise cruises IRL and share technical information.

Most of these communities have been subsumed by Meta, which I believe is a terrible thing. Their platforms are not as conducive for that sort of socialising, without significant amounts of friction.

Remember we used finger to list the users on another university's server then used talk to chat with them. Then bbs for boards/forums, irc for large chat rooms, mud for game (shadows of the mind - the one I used to play on).

Can I feel old now?

If IRC or Usenet count, sometime in the '90s for my own account. I had a myspace fairly early and Facebook back when it was .edu only (I forget which was earlier). I'm old

My first social media was facebook :3 which I joined as a kid entirely for the facebook games

Compuserve, dialing in, pre-internet

I guess, Gaia Online? That's the first thing I can think of making an account on.

Bolt was my first social media experience in the mid 90s. I hardly ever hear people talk about it and I didn’t notice anyone mention it in this thread. There were forums, games, chat rooms, and you could earn different badges. It was perfect for middle school me. I was introduced to a lot of good punk bands through forums there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolt\_(website)

Facebook. I thought it was an email service back then.

My first social media....that's a difficult question, i used a lot...tumblr, msn messenger, pidgin, blogspot, google +,facebook...

But i have lot good memories with an online game, the mmo Dofus. I was in a guild (Gaïa) on an international server at 13 years old. It was fun, i talked to a chinese person, she encouraged me to learn english, shared her favorite music. :)

CompuServ chat rooms when I was 8.

To any French person here. Skyblog

That shit was lit, everyone was on it in France at some point but it then disappeared when Facebook arrived.

I think it was livejournal, but there's a chance I had some forum account somewhere even before that.

A guy at my highschool had set up his own website, forum, and email. A handful of people were active on there. It was a simpler time.

Also I used those AOL chat rooms before that. So many pedophiles on there looking for children. It got tiresome because I was just looking for kids my age to talk with.