Top 10 Social Media Platforms That Failed Spectacularly

Lasting only a few months, The Hub was Wal-Mart’s poorly designed store brand-like take on Myspace. Targeted directly towards teenagers, users could upload videos, but more importantly, create wish lists of the Wal-Mart products they so desired. As one would expect, there was a lack of engagement, heavy advertising, and a lot of people asking “why?” It’s hard to determine whether Wal-Mart planned to stick with the network or not, but judging from the timing, it seems like it was nothing more than a marketing ploy for the back-to-school season.

Ello is a service that claims to be free of ads, doesn’t enforce a real-name policy, and never sells user information. Featuring hashtag functions, a NSFW setting and bread emoji to like posts – for whatever reason – Ello arrived on the scene with the potential to knock down competitors… if only it didn’t look just like them. At first, Ello had a design similar to Facebook, but it’s since morphed into something more resembling Pinterest. While critics have praised its innovation, it’s been noted that the lack of popular traction could lead to its downfall.

Before Reddit, we had Digg, a social news site where users could upvote or downvote articles. Sounds like a good idea on paper, but this led groups to band together to bury certain articles while digging pages with other stories they felt were important – which ultimately led to spamming. Adding to Digg’s problems was an encryption key leak in 2007 with a series of article removals thereafter, which caused the community to accuse the network of violating free speech. Meanwhile, with Digg busy ironing out these issues, Facebook and Reddit were rising in popularity, making the website effectively obsolete.

In a world where advertisements pop up almost anywhere, Diaspora had the benefit of refusing to place any kind of ads, much like Ello. You might be quick to say “Sign us up” based on that alone - if only it weren’t for its shortcomings. The format was practically a carbon copy of Google+ and it didn’t provide many basic features that can be found on Facebook. The biggest burden was that you would have to install software on your computer just to use the service, an extra step that causes many to just stick with Facebook.

If you want to launch your own social network, take a lesson from Xanga, one of the oldest social networks on this list - and one that is surprisingly still active. But just wait until you hear about the service it provides: users can make their own blogs with audio, video, and mini-blogs about whatever they want to share. They’re the basic features of a social network, but despite their long history, they can’t seem to get a moment in the limelight. And how can they when there are more powerful blogging sites like tumblr? In the end, Xanga just doesn’t seem do anything to really set itself apart.

Named after its creator, Orkut Büyükkökten, this platform was Google’s first step into social media. That first step, however, was more of a stumble as the network was littered with worms and authentication issues. Orkut also served as home to several hate campaigns and a harbor to suspected pedophiles, resulting in the company being issued fines and lawsuits. On top of that, there were tons of fake profiles and spam, making it surprising that this platform survived an entire decade. In 2014, Orkut waved the white flag, stating it was shutting down due to the popularity of Facebook, YouTube, Blogger, and Google+.

Google’s early adventures in the social media space saw the creation of Google Wave, which had a messy and confusing format, and Google Buzz, which suffered from weak privacy policies and resulted in stolen information. Then came Google+. As Google’s fourth attempt at social media, this was the most imposing service they launched. YouTubers were forced to make accounts to comment on videos, and if you chose to not release your real name, your account could be suspended. Changes were eventually made, but the damage had already been done and the fallout lingers. Meanwhile, celebrity endorsements are unlikely to change anyone’s mind about the platform.

Considered the grandfather of social networks, Friendster was essentially a Facebook prototype. The network could be used for sharing photos and videos, discovering new places and events, and even dating. It tried keeping up with the trends and features set by Facebook, but by 2011 gave up that battle and changed to a gaming platform. However, by the time that transition was made, most gamers were comfortably holed up on Xbox Live, Playstation Network, and Steam. Although Friendster had a foothold in Asia, the writing was on the wall; the company closed its doors in 2015, citing a “lack of engagement by the online community” and the failure to keep up with the industry.

In hindsight, was it really a big surprise that iTunes tried to jump on the social media bandwagon? In 2010, Apple Inc. announced it was expanding the iTunes branch with its own social network, Ping. Through the service, users could follow their favorite recording artists as well as friends – y’know, like you do on Facebook and Twitter. Apple eventually realized this, but not until two years had gone by. Pulling the plug on Ping in 2012, Apple offered Facebook and Twitter integration for iTunes in its place. In hindsight, integration would’ve been a better move from the get-go, and it would’ve saved users from the never-ending spam that followed sign-up.

Before we share our top pick, here are a few Dishonorable Mentions:
- Yahoo! Buzz (2000-11)
- hi5 (2004-)
- Bebo (2005-)

Before Facebook came into the world, Myspace was the top dog in social media. It retained the status of the largest social networking site in the world for four years, and it helped launched companies like Zynga and RockYou. However, after Mark Zuckerberg unleashed his website on the world, it only took a few years for users to unfriend Tom and Myspace to sink into obscurity. While considered dead by the general public, and basically a pop-culture punchline, the site is still alive, but it continues to struggle with keeping itself relevant while being overshadowed by Facebook.


Do you agree with our list? What do you think are the biggest social media failures? For more Top 10s published every day, be sure to subscribe to WatchMojo.com!