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The original Facebook didn't have a status to update; that didn't come until around late 2007 or early 2008. There was no chat until that time as well, just "po

The original Facebook didn't have a status to update; that didn't come until around late 2007 or early 2008. There was no chat until that time as well, just "poke." In 2004 it still managed to be "social" for its time though, especially with its focus on a campus. For a very long time Facebook was just mostly static pages with a list of friends and a "wall" your friends could write on, and maybe, IIRC, photo upload. That's it! It was literally that boring! Uploading a new profile pic deleted your old one, even. That being said, you could still use Facebook to contact people, if they included their phone number or AIM name, which was accessable to anyone in your college. I was contacted several times this way before Facebook chat/message/whatever else. I remember when the "mini feed" feature was released, and all it did was list your last 5 or so activities. That was controversial. The current Facebook shares very little resemblance to the original version, it's very, very fundamentally different from 2004 Facebook. ...yet the original version still got popular. That being said, the first time. I heard about Facebook was one of those college publications like this one. I wish I could read it today but it was just a student publication that was printed on regular paper and put around campus every once it a while. I remember reading it and being baffled as to why it would be popular. Shortly after that the person I was dating at the time asked me to sign up. That is the only reason I did!

aidos 10y ago
Haha. Remember when they first introduced apps and they had access to everything? So people were tracking who was viewing your photos the most etc. It was the Wild West out there.
notahacker 10y ago
I wasn't on it in March 2004, but things like the Wall on individual profiles came very early and even other long-gone features like the metadata on favourite bands anticipated the like graph they ultimately ended up with. The thing I remember most about the mini feed was how much people complained when it was introduced...
8note 10y ago
the wall was chat. there was one screen where you could check on who's online, then you'd write on their wall
- nommm-nommm 10y ago
  I remember, but it was really quite different than what you'd think of as a chat. I'd write something on your wall and you'd reply by posting something on my wall two days later. Everyone saw both. That was the only chat available. There was very little interactivity. The wall was mostly equivalent to scrawling something in a public bathroom, hence the name.
andrewksl 10y ago
> The original Facebook didn't have a status to update; that didn't come until around late 2007 or early 2008 It wasn't that late. At early as 2005, there was a form with the prompt "John Doe is:" and you had to squeeze whatever thoughts you needed your friends to know into that format.
- rco8786 10y ago
  No way. When they launched the status feature they got all kinds of crap for copying twitter, which launched in 2006.
  - karmelapple 10y ago
    Correct. April 20, 2007, appears to be the date according to http://www.jonloomer.com/2012/05/06/history-of-facebook-changes/ http://www.jonloomer.com/2012/05/06/history-of-facebook-chan...
- nommm-nommm 10y ago
  2005? Nope and no and no way in hell. First of all, mini-feed launched in Sep, 2006, according to a TechCrunch post from that time. That was the real time Facebook started to be anything near what it is today, and certainly well before status updates. I first noticed people using status updates in March 2008, how do I know month and year, you ask? because there was serious shit going on on my life at the time. And I remember reading "X is blah blah blah" for the first time while I was going through my shit. It was new enough to notice. I'll conceed that the "status feature" may have existed a year before I really noticed it, so we are still at early 2007 two years earlier than 2005. I also do recall the criticism of "you're copying Twitter" as a sibling posted. I remember using the brand new Facebook chat about April or May 2008, FWIW.
  - Semaphor 10y ago
    My first status post on facebook was 2006-09-05 edit: 2006, not 2016.
  - andrewksl 10y ago
WorldMaker 10y ago
I've had people ask me why I always refer to it as "the facebook" and its fun explaining to people that that really was what it was called at the time I signed up. Also, "the facebook" was late to my college campus (relatively) so we hopped through a small collection of facebooks. It's weird today that most people don't realize there were multiple competitive facebooks or that it was essentially a generic term before it was a brand... It's especially weird when I see people roll their eyes or laugh at someone say my grandmother's age referring to it as "the facebook", because to them its quaint and elderly, and I'm tempted to break out the "get off my lawn, that's what it has always been called" speech... Internet history is weird.

aidos 10y ago

Haha. Remember when they first introduced apps and they had access to everything? So people were tracking who was viewing your photos the most etc. It was the Wild West out there.

notahacker 10y ago

I wasn't on it in March 2004, but things like the Wall on individual profiles came very early and even other long-gone features like the metadata on favourite bands anticipated the like graph they ultimately ended up with. The thing I remember most about the mini feed was how much people complained when it was introduced...

8note 10y ago

the wall was chat. there was one screen where you could check on who's online, then you'd write on their wall

nommm-nommm 10y ago
I remember, but it was really quite different than what you'd think of as a chat. I'd write something on your wall and you'd reply by posting something on my wall two days later. Everyone saw both. That was the only chat available. There was very little interactivity. The wall was mostly equivalent to scrawling something in a public bathroom, hence the name.

andrewksl 10y ago

> The original Facebook didn't have a status to update; that didn't come until around late 2007 or early 2008 It wasn't that late. At early as 2005, there was a form with the prompt "John Doe is:" and you had to squeeze whatever thoughts you needed your friends to know into that format.

rco8786 10y ago
No way. When they launched the status feature they got all kinds of crap for copying twitter, which launched in 2006.
- karmelapple 10y ago
  Correct. April 20, 2007, appears to be the date according to http://www.jonloomer.com/2012/05/06/history-of-facebook-changes/ http://www.jonloomer.com/2012/05/06/history-of-facebook-chan...
nommm-nommm 10y ago
2005? Nope and no and no way in hell. First of all, mini-feed launched in Sep, 2006, according to a TechCrunch post from that time. That was the real time Facebook started to be anything near what it is today, and certainly well before status updates. I first noticed people using status updates in March 2008, how do I know month and year, you ask? because there was serious shit going on on my life at the time. And I remember reading "X is blah blah blah" for the first time while I was going through my shit. It was new enough to notice. I'll conceed that the "status feature" may have existed a year before I really noticed it, so we are still at early 2007 two years earlier than 2005. I also do recall the criticism of "you're copying Twitter" as a sibling posted. I remember using the brand new Facebook chat about April or May 2008, FWIW.
- Semaphor 10y ago
  My first status post on facebook was 2006-09-05 edit: 2006, not 2016.
- andrewksl 10y ago

WorldMaker 10y ago

I've had people ask me why I always refer to it as "the facebook" and its fun explaining to people that that really was what it was called at the time I signed up. Also, "the facebook" was late to my college campus (relatively) so we hopped through a small collection of facebooks. It's weird today that most people don't realize there were multiple competitive facebooks or that it was essentially a generic term before it was a brand... It's especially weird when I see people roll their eyes or laugh at someone say my grandmother's age referring to it as "the facebook", because to them its quaint and elderly, and I'm tempted to break out the "get off my lawn, that's what it has always been called" speech... Internet history is weird.