Social media are computer-mediated technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information , ideas, career interests and other forms of expression via virtual communities and networks . GeoCities was one of the Internet's earliest social networking websites, appearing in November 1994, followed by Classmates in December 1995, Six Degrees in May 1997, Open Diary in October 1998, LiveJournal in April 1999, Ryze in October 2001, Friendster in March 2002, LinkedIn in May 2003, hi5 in June 2003, MySpace in August 2003, Orkut in January 2004, Facebook in February 2004, Yahoo! 360° in March 2005, Bebo in July 2005, Twitter in July 2006, Tumblr in February 2007, and Google+ in July 2011. Some of the most popular social media websites are Baidu Tieba , Facebook (and its associated Facebook Messenger ), Google+ , Myspace , Instagram , LinkedIn , Pinterest , Snapchat , Tumblr , Twitter , Viber , VK , WeChat , Weibo