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Facebook’s Earliest Rival, Why It Failed.

4 points by sinzone 16y ago

nostrademons 16y ago
Amherst College had a web-based social network called "planWorld" (after VAX .plans, which it replaced) starting around 1999. I know Grinnell had something similar. I have to imagine that other colleges did too. Amherst also had the DailyJolt, a web forum founded around 1999, and that one actually expanded to several other campuses. I suspect that FaceBook became dominant because it had a.) the right features b.) at the right time c.) expanding to the right places d.) in the right order. Sites like Friendster died because they missed critical features, namely the ability to stay up for a reasonable amount of time under load. Friendster was also good for making friends (or at least recording them), but didn't provide very much for you to do with them. Sites like planWorld - and LiveJournal, for that matter, which was far better and more dominant than FaceBook in 2004 - failed because they were too early. They couldn't get a critical mass of people to explode in popularity, because social networking was still a niche activity, popular among geeks and nerds but not among the general public. Sites like Campus Network (or planWorld, again) failed because they failed to expand. As the article says, Campus Network was way more popular among Columbia students, and FaceBook had to struggle to make inroads at Columbia. And among Amherst students who attended between 1996 and 2005, planWorld still tends to be more popular than FaceBook. Sites like MySpace failed because they tried to expand in the wrong order. MySpace captured the 20-something music scene, and then the high school market. But college kids don't do what high school kids are doing, high school kids do what college kids are doing. And (at least in technology) kids don't do what their parents are doing, parents do what their kids do. FaceBook had perfect positioning to take over the rest of the market, because high school kids do what college kids do, and college kids eventually graduate and become 20-somethings, and then parents do what their kids are doing. MySpace had no room to expand once FaceBook captured the college market, because they lost the high schoolers to FaceBook, and then they had no beachhead to grab the parents. It kinda reminds me of what Google told us during orientation: Google succeeded because they had the right idea, at the right time, with the right technology and the right people, in the right place. And without any of those elements, they would've failed miserably. I suspect a lot of startups are in the same boat.
carbocation 16y ago
The original article that this is taken verbatim from is at http://www.slate.com/id/2269131/ http://www.slate.com/id/2269131/

4 points by sinzone 16y ago

Amherst College had a web-based social network called "planWorld" (after VAX .plans, which it replaced) starting around 1999. I know Grinnell had something similar. I have to imagine that other colleges did too. Amherst also had the DailyJolt, a web forum founded around 1999, and that one actually expanded to several other campuses. I suspect that FaceBook became dominant because it had a.) the right features b.) at the right time c.) expanding to the right places d.) in the right order. Sites like Friendster died because they missed critical features, namely the ability to stay up for a reasonable amount of time under load. Friendster was also good for making friends (or at least recording them), but didn't provide very much for you to do with them. Sites like planWorld - and LiveJournal, for that matter, which was far better and more dominant than FaceBook in 2004 - failed because they were too early. They couldn't get a critical mass of people to explode in popularity, because social networking was still a niche activity, popular among geeks and nerds but not among the general public. Sites like Campus Network (or planWorld, again) failed because they failed to expand. As the article says, Campus Network was way more popular among Columbia students, and FaceBook had to struggle to make inroads at Columbia. And among Amherst students who attended between 1996 and 2005, planWorld still tends to be more popular than FaceBook. Sites like MySpace failed because they tried to expand in the wrong order. MySpace captured the 20-something music scene, and then the high school market. But college kids don't do what high school kids are doing, high school kids do what college kids are doing. And (at least in technology) kids don't do what their parents are doing, parents do what their kids do. FaceBook had perfect positioning to take over the rest of the market, because high school kids do what college kids do, and college kids eventually graduate and become 20-somethings, and then parents do what their kids are doing. MySpace had no room to expand once FaceBook captured the college market, because they lost the high schoolers to FaceBook, and then they had no beachhead to grab the parents. It kinda reminds me of what Google told us during orientation: Google succeeded because they had the right idea, at the right time, with the right technology and the right people, in the right place. And without any of those elements, they would've failed miserably. I suspect a lot of startups are in the same boat.

carbocation 16y ago

The original article that this is taken verbatim from is at http://www.slate.com/id/2269131/ http://www.slate.com/id/2269131/