We’ve documented much of the internet and its memes over the years, so to gain insight into how it’s evolved since 2010, we compiled our data on where memes originate by breaking down influential sites and platforms up to 2022 in a recent study: bit.ly/3Q38N1h

Over time, sites rise and fall, social media apps come and go, but the internet’s creation of memes has only continued to increase in quantity and diversity as users online move from one platform to another.

Starting off back in 2010, both YouTube and 4chan were predominantly the original sources of many influential memes we still use today. In contrast to later years in our study, you can see that early internet memes were largely site-originated vs. social media-originated.

Jumping up to 2014, the rising dominance of social media platforms began to shift many meme origins away from their niche website roots as internet culture slowly became more mainstream and people became fully enthralled with social media in general.

Continuing on to 2019, a new competitor in the social space begins to enter the fray — TikTok. While still largely in its infancy at this point, TikTok was only eclipsed by Twitter and Reddit as social media platforms overall continued to engulf almost all of the pie chart.

While the last quarter of 2022 remains to be seen, meme origins this year have been largely dominated by TikTok as the app’s user base continues to rise. At nearly half of meme origins, TikTok has dwarfed even Twitter’s supremacy in 2019, showing no signs of slowing down either.

The changes in our data indicate platforms are anything but stable, and today's ecosystem will undoubtedly look different in another decade. To learn more and see the standout memes from each year, read our article here for even more insights: bit.ly/3Q38N1h

For my latest Bloomberg, I spoke with Don Caldwell 🦑 from Know Your Meme on the importance of meme literacy. bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…

I was absolutely honored to have a chance to speak to the great Trung Phan about Know Your Meme and Know Your Meme Insights. Check it out!

1/ After a year of hard work with an incredible team led by Don Caldwell 🦑, it's great to see Bloomberg discuss a little about what we are doing with our KYM Insights product, which I've called the "Bloomberg for social media". bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…