I don't really agree with that. Facebook was originally about mirroring your real-life social network. In the mid 00's nobody was trying to get likes from strangers on Facebook.
Instagram is closer to broadcast, but it was always closely tied to the mobile app experience and the "follower" mentality. People didn't really share links to Instagram posts in other online venues in the beginning.
Twitter was always unique. It existed before smartphones, and there was a good chunk of years where people without smartphones would read twitter posts on desktops. Its producer/consumer distribution is much more skewed, many twitter users never post. Tweets were always getting posted to places like HN, reddit, discussed in news articles, etc.
I think Twitter's (former) position as a broadcast medium à la TV, radio, and newspapers is unique among social networks. There's a reason why Twitter was the place for journalists, politicians, academics, fire departments, web service status alerts, etc.
Instagram is closer to broadcast, but it was always closely tied to the mobile app experience and the "follower" mentality. People didn't really share links to Instagram posts in other online venues in the beginning.
Twitter was always unique. It existed before smartphones, and there was a good chunk of years where people without smartphones would read twitter posts on desktops. Its producer/consumer distribution is much more skewed, many twitter users never post. Tweets were always getting posted to places like HN, reddit, discussed in news articles, etc.
I think Twitter's (former) position as a broadcast medium à la TV, radio, and newspapers is unique among social networks. There's a reason why Twitter was the place for journalists, politicians, academics, fire departments, web service status alerts, etc.