3 ms·

Why did Columbia's Campus Network lose out to Harvard's Facebook?

27 points by aarghh 16y ago

dgant 16y ago
I was one of the original users of the site. The article, while good, omits what I think are two of the most important causes. When CUCommunity was relaunched a CampusNetwork, there was a long period -- several weeks, perhaps months -- when the site was down. Completely. When it came back online as CampusNetwork, a lot of the user base never came back. People who had previously made regular visits to CUCommunity were now using Facebook instead. The second, and possibly more fatal problem, was that the site community's attention became focused around trolls. Abusive attention-seeking users were often the first people one encountered on the site, and most of the discussion on the site revolved around them. Facebook's salvation from the latter fate came from the lack of universally accessible communication features: a feature they have yet to implement, perhaps for that very reason.
- funthree 16y ago
  Implementing a new UI might have had something to do with that downtime. That and looking back the UI seems a bit over done compared to facebook CUCommunity tutorial : http://mengto.com/project/campusnetwork.com/tutorial.swf http://mengto.com/project/campusnetwork.com/tutorial.swf http://mengto.com/project/campusnetwork.com/splash.htm http://mengto.com/project/campusnetwork.com/splash.htm http://mengto.com/project/campusnetwork.com/696.jpg http://mengto.com/project/campusnetwork.com/696.jpg
newchimedes 16y ago
Definitely an interesting case study and the first time I had heard about CampusNetwork. I didn't understand what Goldberg motivation for taking down his high school social network was... From the article: "In the meantime, Goldberg had launched a social network for high schools called Friendex. But he says he killed the project after a month at the request of Zuckerberg and the Facebook team. "They made me feel really bad for having launched it," he says. "So I took it down." Facebook soon expanded to high schools." How did Facebook make him feel bad? Why would he feel bad either? Seems like FB at the time wasn't in high school so it would make sense to try to make a play there...more importantly considering how facebook started...they should be the last people to make people feel bad to starting a competing service...

27 points by aarghh 16y ago

dgant 16y ago

I was one of the original users of the site. The article, while good, omits what I think are two of the most important causes. When CUCommunity was relaunched a CampusNetwork, there was a long period -- several weeks, perhaps months -- when the site was down. Completely. When it came back online as CampusNetwork, a lot of the user base never came back. People who had previously made regular visits to CUCommunity were now using Facebook instead. The second, and possibly more fatal problem, was that the site community's attention became focused around trolls. Abusive attention-seeking users were often the first people one encountered on the site, and most of the discussion on the site revolved around them. Facebook's salvation from the latter fate came from the lack of universally accessible communication features: a feature they have yet to implement, perhaps for that very reason.

funthree 16y ago
Implementing a new UI might have had something to do with that downtime. That and looking back the UI seems a bit over done compared to facebook CUCommunity tutorial : http://mengto.com/project/campusnetwork.com/tutorial.swf http://mengto.com/project/campusnetwork.com/tutorial.swf http://mengto.com/project/campusnetwork.com/splash.htm http://mengto.com/project/campusnetwork.com/splash.htm http://mengto.com/project/campusnetwork.com/696.jpg http://mengto.com/project/campusnetwork.com/696.jpg

newchimedes 16y ago

Definitely an interesting case study and the first time I had heard about CampusNetwork. I didn't understand what Goldberg motivation for taking down his high school social network was... From the article: "In the meantime, Goldberg had launched a social network for high schools called Friendex. But he says he killed the project after a month at the request of Zuckerberg and the Facebook team. "They made me feel really bad for having launched it," he says. "So I took it down." Facebook soon expanded to high schools." How did Facebook make him feel bad? Why would he feel bad either? Seems like FB at the time wasn't in high school so it would make sense to try to make a play there...more importantly considering how facebook started...they should be the last people to make people feel bad to starting a competing service...