Discover the Top 11 Surprising Fun Facts About Social Media in 2012: Time Capsule Edition!

1. Facebook's 2012 Music Marathon

While music enthusiasts were busy "Face-jamming" like pros in 2012, their fingers feverishly clicked away from the limelight, creating an encore unlike any other: Facebook users spent a cumulative 210,000 years listening to music on the site, with over 62.6 million songs rocking their playlists, garnishing more than 22 billion clicks, as they uploaded 219 billion photos and fostered 140.3 billion connections with fellow music-loving social networkers.
Source => washingtonpost.com

2. Library of Congress Collects Tweets

Who said birds don't have libraries? The Library of Congress has been collecting tweets from Twitter for years: In 2010, they acquired the entire archive of public tweet text from 2006 onwards. However, due to privacy and functionality concerns, they shifted their approach in 2018 to selectively acquire tweets, much like their website collections. While the Twitter collection is safely stored, access remains restricted as they navigate through issues related to cost effectiveness and sustainability.
Source => blogs.loc.gov

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3. LinkedIn's Explosive Growth in 2012

Next time you extend your Rolodex, don't forget your digital ties: In 2012, LinkedIn outgrew its suspenders and became the largest professional network on the internet, welcoming over 160 million monthly visitors, amassing 200 million members across 200 countries, and onboarding two new members every second.
Source => news.linkedin.com

4. Rise of the Selfie Craze

Before the selfie stick was a glimmer in a narcissist's eye, and long before everyone and their grandma knew their angles: in 2012, the term "selfie" rose in popularity, culminating in a 17,000% usage increase and subsequently being named the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year in 2013, beating out contenders like "twerk" and "bitcoin."
Source => cnn.com

5. "Gangnam Style" Smashes YouTube Records

Before Psy was galloping into our hearts and "Gangnam Style" broke the internet, it was busting the YouTube view banks like no bear raid on Wall Street ever could: In December 2012, the catchy phenomenon achieved a billion views within 159 days after its premiere, peaking at 14.9 million views per day, and remained the most-watched music video until dethroned by "Despacito" in 2017.
Source => billboard.com

6. Twitter's Peak Performance in 2012

Tweet-a-palooza: Move over, Woodstock! 2012 was Twitter's year of glory, with a whopping 215 million monthly active users tweeting like there was no tomorrow, sending out 400 million tweets each day. But by June 2015, although Twitter's monthly user base had grown to 302 million, the number of tweets per day only slightly increased to 500 million, leaving us to wonder if people had developed tweet fatigue or if new users were just silently observing the cacophony of the Twittersphere.
Source => businessinsider.com

7. Emojis Revolutionize Online Communication

They said a picture is worth a thousand words, but who knew those pictures would be tiny and round-faced! Feast your eyes on the evolution of emojis: In 2012, with Apple's iOS 6 introducing an emoji keyboard, these expressive little icons skyrocketed in popularity, and now over 3,000 emojis are part of the Unicode Standard. Used by 92% of the online population daily, emojis are even processed by our brains as non-verbal information, boosting engagement on tweets by 25.4% and Facebook posts by 57%. Who knew we'd be laughing, crying, and heart-eyeing our way to better communication?
Source => pipeline.zoominfo.com

8. Pinterest's Meteoric Success

Hold on to your pin boards and call Buffy the Vampire Slayer, because in 2012, Pinterest took a bite out of the internet's heart and didn't let go: Surpassing all other standalone sites, the platform reached 11.7 million unique monthly U.S. visitors at record-breaking speed, mostly attracting 18-34 year old upper-income women from the East South Central and West North Central States. This rapid success showcased the influence of interest graphs and encouraged startups to prioritize passion over personal connections, even though Pinterest's revenue stream remained as elusive as a vampire at sunrise.
Source => techcrunch.com

9. Obama's Twitter Election Fever

In 2012, it seemed like the Tweeter-in-Chief was also campaigning to become the Retweeter-in-Chief, as the internet-verse exploded with election fever: President Barack Obama's "Four more years" tweet went viral in 327,452 Tweets Per Minute combat, shattering previous records and becoming his most retweeted tweet ever while reigniting hope-triggered Twitter mania with nearly 3,000 Tweets per minute referencing "I Voted" or "#ivoted" hashtags.
Source => m.economictimes.com

10. The Rise and Fall of Vine

When life gives you Vines, make Vine-ade: a looping sojourn in 2012 gave birth to the now-defunct Vine, which Twitter scooped up before it could even toddle into the internet playground in 2013. Climbing to 200 million users by December 2015, this once-available canopy of six-second wonders wilted in 2017, only to sprout anew in 2020 as Byte (or should we say, Huddles?).
Source => en.wikipedia.org

11. Facebook's Real-Name Policy Controversy

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who has the realest name of them all? Well, Facebook had a hard time answering this question back in 2012: The platform's real-name policy landed it in hot water, as its monitoring software struggled with names that had too many words, capital letters, or initials – affecting genuine names belonging to Native Americans, Tamils, and transgender individuals. The ensuing backlash from various communities led to a policy revamp in 2015, after Facebook was schooled in the fine art of name flexibility.
Source => en.wikipedia.org