I have been using social media for my business since the late 90s. My business is eclectic, but generally a combination of music education, sales and service.
Myspace was the first social network that I and other people in my community used for personal gain. I used it to book gigs for my band, and I used it to get gigs for other bands. It was helpful for starting my consulting business.
Facebook came soon after Myspace and I think replaced it. People weren't using Facebook the same way, they used it to share pictures of their meals (that later became a popular thing to do on Instagram), parties and later as adults adopted it, babies and barbecues. I had a page for my music business and got a fair amount of traffic to my website from there. I also started a group for my students which burgeoned into a 10,000+ member group. I used to get plenty of students from it, but things have changed. I haven't changed, I'm the same person I was when it started. People have changed.
In my opinion, Craigslist was never a "social network". It was similar to a newspaper that used to be at gas stations called "Want Ad Advertiser" that listed things for sale. It was really good in the beginning when it was free. Then the owner sold it and they changed it from a free to a paid service. I used to get about 95% of my business from it. Now almost nothing.
Reddit has been around a lot longer than most people realize. I never got any business from it, however, so for me it was just a place to have conversations.
Google Buzz was fairly new in the mid 20s, but very popular with early adopters. @pmarca followed me on Google Buzz! He doesn't remember I'm sure. Buzz turned into Google Plus, and then they made everybody with a Gmail account an automatic user. That went over like a lead balloon. Once again, another "network" that was useless for me and my business.
The early days of Twitter were pretty awesome. Many people in my community used it as an alternative method of communication, like chat. There was a limit to what you could post at a time, so people used a lot of short cuts and emojis. That changed over the years. Now very few of my community use Twitter/X. Music orgs post to it, but never engage with their audience.
Instagram, SnapChat, Pinterest and all the others came later. They all tried to capitalize on peoples' interest, primarily through pictures and text. Pinterest was good for the music business in the early days, but it no longer works as a traffic engine. Sure you can post links to your website from posts, but people don't use it to shop any more.
Nextdoor and other specialty forums came much later. Nextdoor is similar to the way Facebook was before they changed the algorithm. I haven't figured out how to make money from it yet, but I have been able to use it for various reasons in my personal and professional life. I'd say it's the most useful of the social networks
YouTube used to be the place where I got 90% of my music lessons: students for my studio, instrument and bow sales ...now I get almost nothing out of it. I have over 1500 subscribers and post videos every day, but the only ones that gain any traffic are the shorts, and absolutely none of them go to my website from there.
For what it's worth, online has become a crazy place. It used to be a place for musicians and fans to easily find each other. Nowadays, everybody is on their smartphone using apps like TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, Snapchat, Messenger/Whatsapp, Spotify and Google Maps. Recently I've had people tell me they struggled to find a reputable mandolin teacher. Post covid, most small musical instrument stores struggled to stay open and many have closed. The old method of getting a referral from a store is gone. You can still find businesses on Google, but people are not using it as a search engine as much as before. There's a splintering going on in search. Techies like Perplexity, Conservatives and Conspiracy nuts like Startpage and DuckDuckGo. Privacy and security followers like Brave. With so many splinters of attention, there's no one place to go to find what you are looking for. To this day, I don't know how my students find me online. There certainly isn't anything consistent.
I've reverted to using this old blogspot. I like it because it's easy to use. I can post pictures, video and any text related to the articles or posts. I like it because it still works on computers, in any browser, and smartphones, although it does look a little old and clunky on most smartphones these days, but I'm tired of trying to please everyone, and tired of trying to be everywhere at once.
Currently, I use Nextdoor for my art and farm business. I maintain some Facebook groups, but don't actively participate. I maintain a couple Facebook pages for my music and consulting businesses. I do continue to use Twitter/X, although that's really become a time sink, and I should be spending less time on it than I do. I have pages on Instagram, Pinterest and Reddit, but they don't ever lead to business, so I disregard them after checking in once in a while.