7 ms·

There was probably about 100 pre-facebook social networking sites not mentioned in this article. Even Yahoo.com had profiles and was sorta proto-social networki

by flomo 7y ago

There was probably about 100 pre-facebook social networking sites not mentioned in this article. Even Yahoo.com had profiles and was sorta proto-social networking. I always thought Friendster was the interesting one, because they had cornered the SF hipster market at least. Friendster died because it was too popular and they couldn't get it to scale, so when people couldn't login or get their profile to load, they stopped using it. I think with competent technology it could have been Facebook.

qubex 7y ago
I had a Malaysian girlfriend at the time and she was “way into” Friendster, as were all of her friends - and she very much pestered me to ‘participate’. I remember noticing how her ‘friends’ included non-singular entities... like a ‘friend’ which was actually a proxy for her school’s alumni, which all her former schoolmates were ‘friends’ of. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it then, but what it was alluding to was the lack of a notion of communities or (in Facebookish) ‘Groups’.
- flomo 7y ago
  Right, for those who never used Friendster, you could only see friends-of-friends (to a certain degree of separation). So people would friend the profiles of bars and etc to see more people.
- dwyerm 7y ago
  What you saw as a positive feature, I saw as the death of Friendster. My friend added "The Burning Man" as her friend, and I suddenly had thousands of friends neither of us had ever actually met. The activity of this pool completely swamped the output of any of the 'friends' I would actually meet up with. I had a HUGE network, but no friends on Friendster. This wasn't entirely bad to meet up with people outside of your circles, but you needed some way to control the firehose. And, you know, I think that's still not a solved problem. I think I would be more keen on social networks filtering me feed if I had more control over those filters.
  - qubex 7y ago
    I must’ve been unclear, and so I apologise: I didn’t see it as a positive feature; I saw it as a shortcoming users had found a hacky workaround for.
astura 7y ago
It's not a site but I always think of ICQ as one of the original social networks.
- rusk 7y ago
  I didnt use it that much, but ICQ was great

by flomo 7y ago

qubex 7y ago

I had a Malaysian girlfriend at the time and she was “way into” Friendster, as were all of her friends - and she very much pestered me to ‘participate’. I remember noticing how her ‘friends’ included non-singular entities... like a ‘friend’ which was actually a proxy for her school’s alumni, which all her former schoolmates were ‘friends’ of. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it then, but what it was alluding to was the lack of a notion of communities or (in Facebookish) ‘Groups’.

flomo 7y ago
Right, for those who never used Friendster, you could only see friends-of-friends (to a certain degree of separation). So people would friend the profiles of bars and etc to see more people.
dwyerm 7y ago
What you saw as a positive feature, I saw as the death of Friendster. My friend added "The Burning Man" as her friend, and I suddenly had thousands of friends neither of us had ever actually met. The activity of this pool completely swamped the output of any of the 'friends' I would actually meet up with. I had a HUGE network, but no friends on Friendster. This wasn't entirely bad to meet up with people outside of your circles, but you needed some way to control the firehose. And, you know, I think that's still not a solved problem. I think I would be more keen on social networks filtering me feed if I had more control over those filters.
- qubex 7y ago
  I must’ve been unclear, and so I apologise: I didn’t see it as a positive feature; I saw it as a shortcoming users had found a hacky workaround for.

astura 7y ago

It's not a site but I always think of ICQ as one of the original social networks.

rusk 7y ago
I didnt use it that much, but ICQ was great