I just started hearing about some Facebook at some point, and then some (it’s Russia) Odnoklassniki and Vkontakte and a few other spaces.
These seemed to be the sites which lamers use to feel themselves relevant with that Internet thing. Leprosoria of the Web. Places where I wouldn’t go, even if I would sometimes go to porn sites, especially when depressed.
Normal people would use LiveJournal and move from ICQ to XMPP and Skype. Skype voice calls (back then they were better with countryside radio link than now with GPON) were a miracle, so me and everybody around me moved to Skype.
Then there was a moment when the Web suddenly died and everyone was on those social networks.
I actually blame LJ and Skype. Technically these worked fine, but they were a gateway drug.
LJ made it easy to have something like a personal webpage, only it wasn’t personal, it was in LJ. ICQ lost popularity when it fought alternative clients, there were no alternative clients for Skype at all and everybody got used to service providers dictating how people should use their service, imposing their client software.
It’s still terrifying how that ICQ run was the last such run in modern Internet’s history. A company fucked around and found out. Nothing like that has happened since. That’s my canary.