Getting your questions ready
Getting your questions ready
Beat the crowd
10 questions No timer
70 free Social Media trivia questions with answers — technology quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
64 free Social media trivia questions with answers. Social media trivia for anyone who remembers Myspace Tom, the fail whale and the first hashtag. This quiz covers the whole story: the 1997 site that started it all, how Facebook grew out of a Harvard dorm, the first YouTube video and what it shows, why Twitter's limit was 140 characters, the check-in app that turned into Instagram, and the Stanford project that became Snapchat. It also digs into the deals and the records: what Google paid for YouTube, what Facebook paid for Instagram and WhatsApp, the egg that beat Kylie Jenner, the app that hit 100 million users in five days, and the words the Oxford dictionaries crowned because of us all. Founders, mascots, features and flops all get a turn. Difficulty runs from easy to expert and is marked on every question. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia and the primary sources it cites, and each explanation adds one more thing worth knowing.
30 of 70 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which 1997 website, named after a theory of separation, is considered the first social networking site?
SixDegrees.com
Founded by Andrew Weinreich in New York, it let users list friends and family and reached about 3.5 million registered members.
Q 02Friendster turned down a $30 million buyout offer in 2003 from which search giant?
Founder Jonathan Abrams took venture money instead at a $53 million valuation.
Q 03Which company bought the then-hottest social network, home of 'Tom', for $580 million in July 2005?
News Corporation
By June 2006 it was the most visited website in the US; in 2011 Specific Media and Justin Timberlake picked it up for about $35 million.
Q 04Which pop star co-bought Myspace in June 2011 for roughly $35 million?
Justin Timberlake
Myspace had been the largest social network in the world from 2005 to 2009.
Q 05Mark Zuckerberg launched 'TheFacebook' from Harvard on which date?
February 4, 2004
He and Eduardo Saverin each put in $1,000; membership was limited to Harvard students at first.
Q 06What was Zuckerberg's 2003 Harvard site that asked users to pick the 'hotter' of two students called?
Facemash
He was reported and faced expulsion, but the charges were dropped.
Q 07Facebook's thumbs-up 'like' button was first switched on in which year?
2009
Vimeo had added a like button in 2005 and FriendFeed in 2007; Facebook bought FriendFeed six months after launching its own.
Q 08Which video-sharing site added a 'like' button as early as November 2005?
Vimeo
Developer Andrew Pile said they liked the Digg concept but did not want to call them 'Diggs'.
Q 09Facebook rebranded its parent company as Meta in which year?
2021
The change signalled its bet on the 'metaverse'; the service itself had about 3.07 billion monthly users by December 2023.
Q 10YouTube's three founders had all previously worked at which company?
PayPal
Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim founded it on February 14, 2005; Google bought it for $1.65 billion in stock the next year.
Q 11'Me at the zoo', the first YouTube video, shows Jawed Karim in front of which animals?
Elephants
The 19-second clip from the San Diego Zoo went up on April 23, 2005 and has passed 400 million views.
Q 12How much did the search company pay to acquire YouTube in 2006, in stock?
$1.65B
The deal, in Google stock, closed on November 13, 2006; a Nike ad with Ronaldinho had been the first video to hit a million views.
Q 13Twitter began in 2006 as a side project inside which podcasting company?
Odeo
The first prototype was an internal tool for Odeo staff; the founders then bought Odeo back from its investors.
Q 21Which post overtook the record-holding egg as the most-liked Instagram post in December 2022?
Lionel Messi celebrating the World Cup
The carousel has more than 76 million likes; the egg had held the record since January 2019.
Q 22The @world_record_egg account that briefly ruled Instagram was revealed to belong to whom?
A British advertising creative
Chris Godfrey and two friends later used the egg in a Hulu ad about mental health.
Q 23Which name did the ephemeral-photo app founded by Evan Spiegel launch under on iOS in July 2011?
Picaboo
Q 14Twitter's original character limit of 140 was doubled to 280 in which year?
2017
The limit was removed entirely for paying subscribers in 2023.
Q 15Elon Musk acquired Twitter in October 2022 for approximately how much?
$44B
He announced the rebrand to X in July 2023, and the bird logo was fully retired by May 2024.
Q 16What was Twitter's overload error image of birds hoisting a sea creature nicknamed?
The fail whale
Yiying Lu drew it, and designer Jen Simmons coined the name in a September 2007 tweet.
Q 17Who first proposed using the # symbol to group tweets, in a 2007 tweet?
Chris Messina
He never tried to patent it, saying hashtags were 'born of the internet, and owned by no one'; the OED added the word in 2014.
Q 18Before Twitter, the # symbol was already used around 1988 to label channels on which chat system?
IRC
Network-wide IRC channels get a #, while server-local ones use an ampersand.
Q 19Instagram began life as a location check-in app with what name?
Burbn
Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger felt it was too close to Foursquare and refocused on photos; the app hit a million users in two months.
Q 20Facebook bought Instagram in April 2012 for approximately how much?
$1B
Instagram reached a billion users by June 2018.
Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy and Reggie Brown were Stanford students; the ghost mascot Brown designed is called Ghostface Chillah.
Q 24The ghost mascot 'Ghostface Chillah' is named after a member of which hip-hop group?
Wu-Tang Clan
Co-founder Reggie Brown designed it before being ousted from the company months after launch.
Q 25LinkedIn was launched in May 2003 by Eric Ly and which co-founder, later a famous venture capitalist?
Reid Hoffman
Microsoft bought the network in December 2016 for $26.2 billion, its largest acquisition at the time.
Q 26Which company bought LinkedIn in 2016 for $26.2 billion?
Microsoft
LinkedIn now claims more than a billion registered members in over 200 countries.
Q 27Reddit was founded in June 2005 by two roommates at which school?
Virginia
Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian were joined by Aaron Swartz that November, and Conde Nast bought the site in 2006.
Q 28What is the name of Reddit's alien mascot?
Snoo
Subreddits often dress the alien in themed variants; the company listed on the stock market as RDDT in March 2024.
Q 29Pinterest grew out of an earlier app by Ben Silbermann and Paul Sciarra meant to replace paper catalogs. What was it called?
Tote
Pinterest opened as a closed beta in March 2010, and Silbermann personally wrote to its first 5,000 users.
Q 30WhatsApp's founders Brian Acton and Jan Koum had both previously worked at which company?
Yahoo
Facebook bought the app in February 2014 for about $19.3 billion; the name is meant to sound like 'what's up'.