Social Media Quiz
Founders, launch years and billion dollar buyouts: 15 questions on the apps that took over our phones.
Which company owns both Instagram and WhatsApp?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Meta
Facebook bought Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014, and both now sit inside Meta Platforms, the name the parent company adopted in October 2021 alongside Facebook itself and Messenger.
Meta's apps reach more than three billion people every day, making it the largest social media company in the world by users.
Which company owns TikTok?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
ByteDance
TikTok is owned by ByteDance, the Beijing-based company founded by Zhang Yiming in 2012. ByteDance launched TikTok internationally in 2017 and runs a separate Chinese version called Douyin.
Tencent, the wrong option many people pick, owns WeChat and QQ, China's dominant messaging platforms.
Which video site did Google buy for $1.65 billion in stock in 2006?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
YouTube
Google announced the YouTube deal on October 9, 2006, less than two years after the site launched. It was Google's biggest acquisition at the time and YouTube kept its own brand and offices.
YouTube's founders Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim all worked at PayPal before starting the site in 2005.
Mark Zuckerberg's social network launched from Harvard in February 2004 under what name?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Thefacebook
The site launched on February 4, 2004, as Thefacebook, available only to Harvard students before spreading to other colleges. The company bought the facebook.com domain and dropped the The in 2005.
Facemash was Zuckerberg's earlier 2003 site that let students rate classmates' photos, and it was shut down by Harvard within days.
How much did Facebook agree to pay for Instagram in April 2012?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
$1 billion
Facebook announced on April 9, 2012, that it would buy Instagram for about $1 billion in cash and shares. Instagram had 13 employees, 30 million users and no revenue, and the price stunned the industry.
Instagram's co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger had launched the app only 18 months earlier, in October 2010.
Which messaging app did Facebook buy for about $19 billion in 2014?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Facebook announced the WhatsApp deal in February 2014, paying $4 billion in cash plus Facebook shares, and closed it in October. Founders Jan Koum and Brian Acton were both former Yahoo engineers.
Acton later left Facebook over disagreements about advertising and gave $50 million to help launch the Signal Foundation.
Which app launched the Stories format of disappearing posts in October 2013, nearly three years before Instagram copied it?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Snapchat
Snapchat introduced Stories in October 2013, letting users post photos and clips that vanished after 24 hours. Instagram launched its near-identical Stories feature in August 2016 and quickly overtook Snapchat's daily users.
Snapchat began life in 2011 as Picaboo, built by Stanford students Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy and Reggie Brown.
What did Jack Dorsey write in the first ever tweet, posted on March 21, 2006?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
"just setting up my twttr"
Dorsey's post read just setting up my twttr, because the service was then called Twttr, a vowel-free name chosen in the style of Flickr. Twitter opened to the public in July 2006.
A tokenised version of the first tweet sold as an NFT for about $2.9 million in 2021, then attracted bids of only a few thousand dollars when resold.
Who first proposed using the # symbol to group topics on Twitter, in a 2007 tweet about BarCamp?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Chris Messina
Chris Messina, a developer who never worked for Twitter, tweeted on August 23, 2007, suggesting the pound sign for groups, as in #barcamp. He borrowed the idea from IRC chat channels, and Twitter initially dismissed it.
The hashtag took off two months later when San Diego residents used #sandiegofire to share updates during the October 2007 wildfires.
In which year did Twitter double its character limit from 140 to 280?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
2017
Twitter rolled out 280-character tweets to almost all users on November 7, 2017, after a test showed that fewer people abandoned their posts. Japanese, Chinese and Korean kept the 140 limit because they say more per character.
The original 140 limit came from the 160-character SMS limit, leaving 20 characters for a username when tweets were sent by text.
Which app, owned by Twitter, limited every video to just six seconds?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Vine
Vine launched in 2012 and was bought by Twitter for about $30 million before it even went public. Its six-second looping clips created a generation of creators, but Twitter shut the app down in January 2017.
Vine co-founder Dom Hofmann later launched Byte in 2020 as a spiritual successor, and the app was eventually rebranded as Clash.
In which year did Facebook's parent company rename itself Meta?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
2021
Mark Zuckerberg announced the new name at the company's Connect conference on October 28, 2021, saying the Facebook brand was too tied to one app. The Facebook social network itself kept its name.
The company changed its stock ticker from FB to META in June 2022, eight months after the rename was announced.
Which company bought the live streaming platform Twitch for about $970 million in 2014?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Amazon
Amazon announced the all-cash purchase on August 25, 2014, surprising observers who expected Google's YouTube to win the bidding. Twitch kept its brand and CEO Emmett Shear.
Twitch began in 2011 as the gaming channel of Justin.tv, a site built around founder Justin Kan streaming his own life around the clock.
Which lip-sync video app was merged into TikTok in August 2018?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Musical.ly
ByteDance bought Musical.ly for close to $1 billion in November 2017 and folded its roughly 100 million users into TikTok on August 2, 2018. The merger gave TikTok its first big audience in the United States.
Musical.ly was founded in Shanghai in 2014 by Alex Zhu and Luyu Yang, originally as an education app before pivoting to music videos.
Which media company bought MySpace's parent, Intermix Media, for about $580 million in 2005?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
News Corp
Rupert Murdoch's News Corp agreed the deal in July 2005, outbidding Viacom, when MySpace was the fastest growing social network in the world. It sold the site to Specific Media in 2011 for a reported $35 million.
Google paid News Corp $900 million in 2006 to be MySpace's search and advertising partner, more than the site had cost to buy.
Your results
More to explore
All Technology quizzes →About the Social Media Quiz
Facebook paid $1 billion for a photo app with 13 employees. Twitter's first message read "just setting up my twttr". A six-second video app called Vine came and went in under five years. Social media has moved so fast that its history already feels like trivia, and that is exactly what this quiz is for.
The 15 questions cover who founded what, which company owns which app, the launch of features such as Stories and hashtags, and the biggest acquisitions, from YouTube and WhatsApp to LinkedIn and Twitch. Early questions are easy for anyone with a phone; the later ones will challenge serious internet historians.
You will find 15 multiple choice questions here, each with four options. Difficulty: Medium. Most people finish in about 6 minutes, and every answer comes with a short explanation and one extra fact worth keeping.
How to play
Read the question and pick one of the four answers. The correct answer is revealed straight away with a short explanation, then press Next question to keep going. At the end you get your score out of 15 and a full review of your round. Play again any time and the questions arrive in a fresh order. There is no timer and no account.
Good to know before you play
Which social media platforms does this quiz cover?
Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, TikTok, Twitter, Snapchat, YouTube, LinkedIn, Vine, Twitch, MySpace and Threads, with questions on founders, owners, launch years and acquisitions.
Are the acquisition prices up to date?
Yes. Every deal value and date was checked against news reports and company announcements, including the Instagram, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, YouTube and Twitch purchases.
Who is this social media quiz for?
Anyone who uses social apps daily and wants to test how well they know the stories behind them. It suits pub quizzes, classrooms and marketing teams alike.
Answer key: all 15 questions with explanations
- Which company owns both Instagram and WhatsApp?
Meta Facebook bought Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014, and both now sit inside Meta Platforms, the name the parent company adopted in October 2021 alongside Facebook itself and Messenger. Meta's apps reach more than three billion people every day, making it the largest social media company in the world by users. - Which company owns TikTok?
ByteDance TikTok is owned by ByteDance, the Beijing-based company founded by Zhang Yiming in 2012. ByteDance launched TikTok internationally in 2017 and runs a separate Chinese version called Douyin. Tencent, the wrong option many people pick, owns WeChat and QQ, China's dominant messaging platforms. - Which video site did Google buy for $1.65 billion in stock in 2006?
YouTube Google announced the YouTube deal on October 9, 2006, less than two years after the site launched. It was Google's biggest acquisition at the time and YouTube kept its own brand and offices. YouTube's founders Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim all worked at PayPal before starting the site in 2005. - Mark Zuckerberg's social network launched from Harvard in February 2004 under what name?
Thefacebook The site launched on February 4, 2004, as Thefacebook, available only to Harvard students before spreading to other colleges. The company bought the facebook.com domain and dropped the The in 2005. Facemash was Zuckerberg's earlier 2003 site that let students rate classmates' photos, and it was shut down by Harvard within days. - How much did Facebook agree to pay for Instagram in April 2012?
$1 billion Facebook announced on April 9, 2012, that it would buy Instagram for about $1 billion in cash and shares. Instagram had 13 employees, 30 million users and no revenue, and the price stunned the industry. Instagram's co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger had launched the app only 18 months earlier, in October 2010. - Which messaging app did Facebook buy for about $19 billion in 2014?
WhatsApp Facebook announced the WhatsApp deal in February 2014, paying $4 billion in cash plus Facebook shares, and closed it in October. Founders Jan Koum and Brian Acton were both former Yahoo engineers. Acton later left Facebook over disagreements about advertising and gave $50 million to help launch the Signal Foundation. - Which app launched the Stories format of disappearing posts in October 2013, nearly three years before Instagram copied it?
Snapchat Snapchat introduced Stories in October 2013, letting users post photos and clips that vanished after 24 hours. Instagram launched its near-identical Stories feature in August 2016 and quickly overtook Snapchat's daily users. Snapchat began life in 2011 as Picaboo, built by Stanford students Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy and Reggie Brown. - What did Jack Dorsey write in the first ever tweet, posted on March 21, 2006?
"just setting up my twttr" Dorsey's post read just setting up my twttr, because the service was then called Twttr, a vowel-free name chosen in the style of Flickr. Twitter opened to the public in July 2006. A tokenised version of the first tweet sold as an NFT for about $2.9 million in 2021, then attracted bids of only a few thousand dollars when resold. - Who first proposed using the # symbol to group topics on Twitter, in a 2007 tweet about BarCamp?
Chris Messina Chris Messina, a developer who never worked for Twitter, tweeted on August 23, 2007, suggesting the pound sign for groups, as in #barcamp. He borrowed the idea from IRC chat channels, and Twitter initially dismissed it. The hashtag took off two months later when San Diego residents used #sandiegofire to share updates during the October 2007 wildfires. - In which year did Twitter double its character limit from 140 to 280?
2017 Twitter rolled out 280-character tweets to almost all users on November 7, 2017, after a test showed that fewer people abandoned their posts. Japanese, Chinese and Korean kept the 140 limit because they say more per character. The original 140 limit came from the 160-character SMS limit, leaving 20 characters for a username when tweets were sent by text. - Which app, owned by Twitter, limited every video to just six seconds?
Vine Vine launched in 2012 and was bought by Twitter for about $30 million before it even went public. Its six-second looping clips created a generation of creators, but Twitter shut the app down in January 2017. Vine co-founder Dom Hofmann later launched Byte in 2020 as a spiritual successor, and the app was eventually rebranded as Clash. - In which year did Facebook's parent company rename itself Meta?
2021 Mark Zuckerberg announced the new name at the company's Connect conference on October 28, 2021, saying the Facebook brand was too tied to one app. The Facebook social network itself kept its name. The company changed its stock ticker from FB to META in June 2022, eight months after the rename was announced. - Which company bought the live streaming platform Twitch for about $970 million in 2014?
Amazon Amazon announced the all-cash purchase on August 25, 2014, surprising observers who expected Google's YouTube to win the bidding. Twitch kept its brand and CEO Emmett Shear. Twitch began in 2011 as the gaming channel of Justin.tv, a site built around founder Justin Kan streaming his own life around the clock. - Which lip-sync video app was merged into TikTok in August 2018?
Musical.ly ByteDance bought Musical.ly for close to $1 billion in November 2017 and folded its roughly 100 million users into TikTok on August 2, 2018. The merger gave TikTok its first big audience in the United States. Musical.ly was founded in Shanghai in 2014 by Alex Zhu and Luyu Yang, originally as an education app before pivoting to music videos. - Which media company bought MySpace's parent, Intermix Media, for about $580 million in 2005?
News Corp Rupert Murdoch's News Corp agreed the deal in July 2005, outbidding Viacom, when MySpace was the fastest growing social network in the world. It sold the site to Specific Media in 2011 for a reported $35 million. Google paid News Corp $900 million in 2006 to be MySpace's search and advertising partner, more than the site had cost to buy.
Browse other categories
Every category has its own quizzes, each with instant explanations.