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It's a bit disingenuous to pretend (The) Facebook didn't do anything to connect people. Maybe it's because I graduated High School in 2003, but in early 2005 it

It's a bit disingenuous to pretend (The) Facebook didn't do anything to connect people. Maybe it's because I graduated High School in 2003, but in early 2005 it was amazing to be able to connect to people you either went to high school with or went to your own university, people who were often living parallel lives but you just didn't know because your high school friends went out-of-state or college was large enough that you would never interact with them. At that point, you could click on anything in anybody's profile and you'd be able to find people who self-identified with that tag, be it music, movies, or anything else. Most of these people were average computer users, they weren't denizens of LiveJournal/Xanga/internet forums, but they were possibly acquainted with Myspace, which was already a ghetto by 2004. I had friends who were disappointed by the fact that you couldn't style your Facebook page (or track who was visiting your profile). Facebook cleaned up the mess that was Myspace and made it palatable and connecting easy. Over time, Facebook preferred connecting you to people already in your IRL social network instead of new people, and that's when it started getting boring.

agentultra 9y ago
I'm not pretending that it didn't do anything to connect people. It did. In my anecdote the friends who stopped calling around started using Facebook to organize our activities together. But therein was the problem for me: nobody had to actively maintain relationships that way. Socializing became a spectator sport. Passive. It became anti-social. But prior to its existence I still had plenty of friends and we socialized quite a lot using existing technology. It just seems like the Facebook hype-train carried us along and abandoned protocols for services. And the centralization brought along everything with it: the need for users and stickiness sucked up a lot of effort that could've been spent elsewhere but wasn't. So I wonder what the Internet would be like today if instead we had developed the protocols to work around their short-comings rather than went on the path we did, that's all.
- 13of40 9y ago
  In my experience, the "calling around" thing was something that started when everyone got a cellphone. Prior to about 1999, folks would actually just drop by your house unannounced sometimes.
  - batbomb 9y ago
    That's a good point. I also didn't get a cell phone until very late in 2004, and most people I know got them in 2003-2005. I prefaced my comment with my graduation year (2003) because I think the thing that maybe matters a lot is when you came of age between ~1999-2007. Technology was changing so fast on almost a yearly basis in that time frame it's probable people with a 2 year age difference has a widely different experience of being teenagers and young adults. I don't think the same can be said of 2009-2017.
  - chrisfinne 9y ago
    "calling around" started in 1999? I assure you that's how it was for decades prior to 1999 ;-) We just had to sit by the single rotary phone in the kitchen with a 8ft curly cord that was so tangled, it was really only 4ft. Had to deal with lots of busy signals because even once call-waiting was invented, it cost $3 per month and no parent raised during the Great Depression could imagine committing to that expense!
- rahoulb 9y ago
  Arguably we did - both WhatsApp and Facebook messenger were originally based on XMPP and built around their shortcomings (setup and discovery)

agentultra 9y ago

I'm not pretending that it didn't do anything to connect people. It did. In my anecdote the friends who stopped calling around started using Facebook to organize our activities together. But therein was the problem for me: nobody had to actively maintain relationships that way. Socializing became a spectator sport. Passive. It became anti-social. But prior to its existence I still had plenty of friends and we socialized quite a lot using existing technology. It just seems like the Facebook hype-train carried us along and abandoned protocols for services. And the centralization brought along everything with it: the need for users and stickiness sucked up a lot of effort that could've been spent elsewhere but wasn't. So I wonder what the Internet would be like today if instead we had developed the protocols to work around their short-comings rather than went on the path we did, that's all.

13of40 9y ago
In my experience, the "calling around" thing was something that started when everyone got a cellphone. Prior to about 1999, folks would actually just drop by your house unannounced sometimes.
- batbomb 9y ago
  That's a good point. I also didn't get a cell phone until very late in 2004, and most people I know got them in 2003-2005. I prefaced my comment with my graduation year (2003) because I think the thing that maybe matters a lot is when you came of age between ~1999-2007. Technology was changing so fast on almost a yearly basis in that time frame it's probable people with a 2 year age difference has a widely different experience of being teenagers and young adults. I don't think the same can be said of 2009-2017.
- chrisfinne 9y ago
  "calling around" started in 1999? I assure you that's how it was for decades prior to 1999 ;-) We just had to sit by the single rotary phone in the kitchen with a 8ft curly cord that was so tangled, it was really only 4ft. Had to deal with lots of busy signals because even once call-waiting was invented, it cost $3 per month and no parent raised during the Great Depression could imagine committing to that expense!
rahoulb 9y ago
Arguably we did - both WhatsApp and Facebook messenger were originally based on XMPP and built around their shortcomings (setup and discovery)