Kevin Durant’s BlackPlanet page

BlackPlanet

Thanks to Kevin Durant, BlackPlanet was the talk of social media Sunday. Those of us who aren't millennials remember a world with BlackPlanet, before there were Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Snapchat and countless other social media apps and websites of which black people have become the most prolific users.


Now, some people who flock to the previously mentioned sites may not even know what BlackPlanet was or is (yes, it's still out there), but those of us who were plugged into the early days of the internet and social media definitely spent some time on the site.

On Sunday, BlackPlanet was resurrected, thanks to some crafty folks on social media who found Kevin Durant's old BlackPlanet page. And of course, it was everything you'd expect from a then high schooler … even down to the fake age.


BlackPlanet was a social networking site co-founded by Omar Wasow's Community Connect company in 1999. The site consisted of not only personal pages, forums and chat rooms but also job boards. In 2007 the site had 15.8 million registered users, and with those numbers, it was considered a groundbreaking forum for black people.

Everyone had a BlackPlanet page back then, even a certain guy who was running for president. Although Community Connect was purchased for $38 million by Radio One, in a sea of Facebook and other sites, BlackPlanet never regained its momentum from back in the day.

BlackPlanet is now a blip on the social media radar, but it proved back then that black people were at the forefront of social media. Before black Twitter, we had our own space in which to network. Maybe one day BlackPlanet will shine again, but until then, if you had a page, you might want to dust it off and get a good laugh or two.