4 ms·
> limiting membership to only hip young influencers That may have been an unintended consequence, but the genius move was to bootstrap the online social networ
by mseebach 11y ago
> limiting membership to only hip young influencers
That may have been an unintended consequence, but the genius move was to bootstrap the online social network with existing offline social networks (and getting the date integration - email addresses - for free!). Somewhat ironically, privacy (such as it follows strict exclusivity) was a central feature of early Facebook. No other social network did anything like it, they were all free-for-alls.
- scholia 11y agoIt actually wasn't limited to "hip young influencers". It started with people who had a Harvard email address (including staff). It expanded via Ivy League universities, then all US universities and colleges, then US high schools, before finally opening up to the public.
- gmanley 11y agoIt seems like you just listed off the segments of the population that tend to be considered the "hip young influencers". Did you not? College and high school students. My guess was the parent probably was speaking in generalities a bit, students were the vast majority of users.
- scholia 11y agoWell, there are nightclubs that you can only get into if you are a hip young influencer. Facebook didn't require anything like that, just an .edu email address. That let in a lot of very un-hip people, and a smattering of oldies. If you were running a nightclub, I think you'd appreciate the distinction between "let in hip young influencers" and "let in anyone with a student library card". ;-)