France's first social network Skyblog shuts down after 20 years

Looking at a Skyblog in January 2005. The site was one of France's first and most successful home-grown social networks. © FRANCOIS LO PRESTI / AFP

One of France’s earliest social networks, Skyblog, is closing down for good this week. Launched in 2002, the blogging site gave millions of French internet users their first taste of interacting online before it fell out of fashion with the arrival of bigger competitors from the US.

Before there was Instagram, before there was TikTok, in the beginning was the blog.